Oh! You Pretty Things

Chapters

The Morning of the Magicians
Mefisto in Newsprint
The Peppernoder of Stepanchikovo
Jackals and Saddle Arabians (or, Civilization Phaze III)
Prelude to Amor Hesternalis; the Grecian roses begin to fall...
Sonnet XIV
The Garden of Forking Paths
Stoned Immaculate
"that schoolboy thing, etc."
Chess and Dessert

The Morning of the Magicians

From the oneiric field of the supercelestial sphere that girds the firmament, Trixie returned, one-by-one (and according to tokens perceptible only to wizards), his senses to their corporeal centers; thereby dropping out of the asanic sleep and returning his consciousness to the waking world. Acknowledging only for an instant the profound sadness that follows such an action, Trixie felt the warmth of the morning sunrays creep through his flesh (diffracted in some places by hoof-woven sheets), and smelt the sweet and subtle notes of Twilight’s aroma. His tourmaline irises scintillating in the light of day, Trixie opened his eyes to find himself, once again and as he suspected, in Twilight’s bed.

The mare herself was not, though Trixie could sense her presence a few feet away (even with the ensorceled ring constricting his horn). Twilight was doing her morning reading in the quarters below the mezzanine that doubled as her bed chamber in the massive oak tree, where her devoted lover Trixie now laid. This was a position in which Trixie found himself with accelerating recurrence, and while the prospect disagreed with certain sensibilities of his, he had become more-or-less consigned to the fate of being Twilight’s ‘very special somepony’. He sat up in the bed, running a hoof over his matted mane and glancing lazily over the town shown through the window next to his mare’s bed.

The curtain would have certainly been closed to preserve the sanctity of the ‘rites’ performed the night before, so Twilight must have opened it when she awoke, or afterwards to encourage Trixie’s own waking. Not very long ago, she would have simply told him to wake up if it suited her purposes; but Trixie had noticed, five months ago when they had become a couple in earnest, and again two months after that when they started making love, that Twilight was becoming increasingly sympathetic to his proclivity to sleep in (among other propensities she’d once found disagreeable).

Trixie yawned. He had an inkling Twilight would trot up the stairs to greet him once he woke, but perhaps his intuition wasn’t as trained as he would have liked. His new relationship was getting in the way of his more routine magical training, or so he told himself; he had a habit of neglecting his spiritual regimen years before Twilight started coddling him. Trixie stood up , disentangling himself from the wisteria sheets and stretching his limbs, still heavy with sopor. Glancing back once at Twilight’s unmade bed, he smirked, playing back in his mind the hours that left it so disheveled.

Reluctantly dismissing these thoughts, Trixie turned and started making his way down the stairs to the lower chamber, Twilight’s magical library (as opposed to the more generalized selection on the first floor), before he intercepted the mare herself halfway up the stairs. She smiled at him tenderly, with genuine love in her eyes, and Trixie attempted to channel his own love for Twilight into a comparable expression (though he found such emotions confusing and, consequently, frightening). He could rouse himself only to return her look of bounding affection with a smirk and glint in his eye; but Twilight knew him better than anypony else, and so could sense the tremendous effort he put behind this small gesture, and that meant the world to her.

Twilight kissed Trixie once and embraced him, giving him another small peck on the cheek before saying, in a warm voice dripping with devotion, “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Sweetheart,” Trixie responded, opting to use a less saccharine pet name for his special somepony than the preferred ‘Twinkie’ (which he learned early on ought to be reserved for more playful moments of tenderness).

The moment sat for just long enough before Twilight pulled away from their hug and rested her snout against her stallion’s own, the tips of their horns touching, and asked, playfully, “Where do you think you’re going?” Trixie failed to answer in time, mistaking the jape for an actual question that required a thoughtful answer. Twilight, intimately familiar with the processes of Trixie’s mind, realized this, and giggled. “Come help me make the bed,” she asked, nuzzling him.

“What makes you think I haven’t already?” he asked in turn, deadpan. Twilight smirked at him with a knowing look, and they ascended the staircase back into the bedroom.

Twilight could easily fix the sheets with her magic alone, or have Trixie do the same, but she always insisted they make the bed together the morning after one of their nights with each other. Trixie’s first inclination was to suspect it was some sort of subliminal psychological conditioning she was subjecting him to, utilizing the hidden semiotic value of a bed disarrayed by lovemaking and the symbolism inherent in fixing it (as a part of the ‘reformation’ he was meant to be undergoing). But, thanks to Twilight, he began to see the value in second guessing such paranoiac notions. ‘Trixie’s problem is that he doesn’t realize he’s a genius; he thinks everypony’s as smart as he is’ he once overheard Twilight say, defending some paranoid delusion he had to one of her friends. Besides himself, Twilight was the only pony willing to call Trixie a genius and mean it.

They had nearly finished making the bed, Trixie fixing the sheets on Twilight’s side and Twilight fixing those on Trixie’s side, when Trixie’s wandering attention latched onto the photograph Twilight kept framed on her bedside table.

Taken about a decade prior, the photo depicted Trixie and Twilight together, both ten-years-old at the time, after the graduation ceremony of their first year at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Each habited in the scholastic raiment of a first-year graduate, little Twilight Sparkle was gleefully laughing and hugging her friend and fellow student, a young Trixie Lulamoon, the aspergic child-prodigy and only five-point unicorn to attend the school in several hundred years; and whose neutral expression and dead eyed stare fixed on the camera seemed almost humorous juxtaposed to Twilight’s juvenile ebullience.

Ultimately, the young Trixie wouldn’t go on to complete his education at Celestia’s School. This photo would have been taken about four years before Trixie left Canterlot, to go find his secret master on the so-called and whilom ‘Holy’ Island of the Unicorns.

“It’s me and that student I used to tutor,” said Twilight, in a mirthful tone, stood beside Trixie and interrupting his reminiscence before it could reach its tragic conclusion. “What was his name?” she asked jokingly before sidling up to Trixie and pressing her body against his own.

Trixie smiled and uttered a contented noise, then said, “Magic school, before I had descried the recondite arcanum of facial expression.” Twilight was the only pony Trixie felt safe enough around to joke about himself.

“You were just happy as the rest of us,” Twilight nuzzled him. “You just didn’t know to show it,” she continued, reassuringly.

“M-hm,” uttered Trixie, trying to interrupt before Twilight could tack on, ‘and that wasn’t your fault.’

She kissed his cheek, tenderly saying, “And that wasn’t-”

“Has Spike gotten back from Rarity’s, yet?” Trixie interrupted, stepping away from Twilight and toward the doorway. Twilight, being not only very intelligent but also highly attuned to Trixie’s emotions, realized the stallion had mistaken her gentle reassurance for piteous condescension (as he was wont to do when it came to certain conditions of his), so she allowed him to change the subject.

“No, he hasn’t,” Twilight answered, moving in to again nuzzle Trixie. “I was thinking that you and I could go get breakfast in town, then pick him up; because I don’t think he’ll leave unless I make him,” she said, only half joking. “Would you like that?”

“I would, yes. Where shall we eat?” Trixie replied simply, still defensive but nuzzling Twilight in turn, and smelling deeply of her unwashed mane.

“We’ll decide when I finish showering. And you know I take quick showers, so go get ready now, okay?” requested Twilight as sweetly as possible. Trixie always took much longer than her to get ready to go out, even for something casual, and they both knew it.

“Alright,” he answered, after hesitating a few seconds.

“Good,” Twilight kissed him once more on the mouth before trotting downstairs to her bathroom, and Trixie soon followed, descending the stairs to his destination below the roots of the Golden Oak.

It confounded Trixie to try and think why Twilight chose to bathe and perform other menial tasks the way sub-unicorns (a term Trixie would regret using if he ever said it in front of Twilight) must. It was simple for unicorns—and especially so for Trixie and Twilight, who were learned in many schools of thought on magic—to become clean simply by willing it. Such spells, meant to ease the suffering of mortality, were the first to be codified after the practice of magic permeated all strata of Unicorn society (after an ancient and obscure event in Unicorn history known as ‘The Dying of Ulaam’). Whenever he asked, Twilight only said Celestia exhorted her to learn to live without magic, but that did little to slake Trixie’s curiosity.

He assumed Celestia was one of the many foolish magicians his master spoke of: magicians who believed that it was the decadence borne of wanton magic use that led to the fall of High Unicorn civilization, and the desecration of the Holy Island. Trixie was all too willing to trust his master, and for the wrong reasons, that such beliefs were foolish; chiefly because it suited his own sybaritic predilections.

Whenever he started in on this subject, Twilight often thought of pointing out how, when Trixie started his ‘reformation’ with her and wasn’t allowed to use any magic, he burst into tears on several occasions when he couldn’t perform even simple physical tasks without the use of spells and telekinesis. To do this successfully, of course, would necessitate calling upon a degree of self awareness in Trixie that his puerile worldview and fragile self esteem did not furnish him. Twilight was too kind-hearted to realize that consciously, but refrained anyway, because she didn’t want to embarrass him.

Trixie had now arrived at his private quarters in the library basement, in a roomy alcove attached to the main chamber that housed Twilight’s various machines and contraptions. Another belief Trixie had inherited from his master was that machines had no real value, being only shallow, externalized reifications of the magical will; and that there was nothing a machine could do that a spell couldn’t do more efficiently and more gracefully. For similar reasons, he avoided all modern schools of material science, from physics to chemistry, and regarded them as degenerate shadows of the divine sciences and philosophies that precipitated them.

But he had enough tact to keep these opinions to himself around Twilight, and doted on her genius and talent for such things, even if he didn’t care for them.

Turning away from the machinery and his contemplation of it, he opened the door to his own little chamber, decorated with antique carpets and furniture of seemingly foreign design and fabrication. In a nook opposite the door, and concealed by arras, was a featherbed heaped with silken sheets and two or three woolen blankets (which Twilight liked because, as she put it, they smelled like Trixie). It wasn’t much, but for Trixie, it was home.

Besides the few comforts all ponies need to live contentedly were the tools of Trixie’s mission in life; the mission of all magicians—and ultimately, of all living things. Voluminous tomes anent the antediluvian metaphysics and theology of his Unicorn antecedents took the most prominent positions in his array of carven wood bookshelves and lecterns; their ideas transmitted in the primitive but sublimely complex ideograms his master had taught him to read and translate. In addition to these were many grimoires and other antiquarian treasures, redolent with the anagogic energies of the magicians who wrote and used them, written in many dead tongues it was Trixie’s pleasure to speak, and filled with the orisons and inchauntments wizards of yore perorated in sacred places locked away deep in the mind of their listener.

(Many of the first variety were simply magical simulacra Trixie had made from books his master had collected over his long life, but even these had extraordinary value, for the texts were all thought to be lost with the Holy Island, forever. Twilight, once Trixie revealed the holy books to her, spent weeks trying to convince him to translate and donate them to the Royal Library, for a time, so copies could be made by the sciolists there; but just as his master before him had done, Trixie considered the knowledge within these texts forbidden to those uninitiated in the mysteries of the nigh forgotten High Unicorn religion, and its abstruse mandala of deities.)

Besides the books were Unicorn halidoms from different eras and other relics—of variegated cultures and times—Trixie had collected during his bohemian travels as an entertainer; and stored in sturdy but not artisanal display cases stacked on one another (thus defeating the purpose of their construction). Elaborate decks of intricately painted cards sat on a bizarre analogion, as necessitated by his master’s method of sortilege, and other tools of divination were stored in mastercraft footlockers pushed against the walls where bookshelves could not have been.

The walls themselves were all but plastered with alchemical and astrological rubrics and graphs, along with posters of the larger magic shows Trixie had put on—his favorite being for the week he spent performing at the Pandemonium Resort and Casino in Las Pegasus.

A few chests were devoted to similar collections of his, such as the many occultic devices and apparatuses Trixie had found in curiosity shops all over Equestria; the most prominent being an old tepaphone he liked to tinker with, but could never seem to make work.

In some places, the floor was littered with stacks of art books and little poetry booklets he liked to quote.

After an indeterminable but not inordinate span of time spent pondering that tempestuous week in Las Pegasus, Trixie stepped briskly through his room toward his wardrobe, paying little heed to the many artifacts it was his good fortune to own and study. As he channeled his will through his horn, opening the doors of the wardrobe in the corner, his eye caught the single framed photograph he kept in his chamber, sat on a meticulously kempt fane between bookshelves.

It wasn’t really a photograph, but an image captured magically and imprinted on a special sort of papyrus. It depicted Trixie, about nineteen years old, stood proudly next to his elderly, ailing master, in front of a tower constructed of black basalt on the eastern shore of the desecrated Island of Unicorns. Master was a unicorn, white of coat and with Trixie’s same dead stare emanating from crimson, cataracted eyes. He called himself (and until his exile, everypony else called him) Cosmic Dancer; but Trixie, and perhaps one other pony, knew his birth name to be Yisrach L’ulaamun.

As several possible outfits for his and Twilight’s breakfast floated onto his bed (the arras now riven to reveal it), Trixie levitated the picture to his face and kissed the glass. Then he whispered a short prayer to whatever remained of his master, like a word on a wing to any plane or planes of existence on which that remnant now subsisted.

Looking over the assorted clothes, Trixie put together a fashion-forward ensemble of newer, trendier clothes (as opposed to the ostentatious and nearly mediaeval cloaks and tunics he preferred,) because he thought Twilight might appreciate it (and he felt that was a sacrifice he could make, today).

Clapping the hooves of his forelegs together, Trixie intoned a truncated but effective magical formula, and a translucent wreath of flame enveloped his egyptian blue coat for less than a second, painlessly licking away all that was unclean on his body and mane. Brushing the tangles from his hair and levitating the various pieces of his outfit around his physique, a thought struck him.

“Oh! I nearly forgot to anoint myself,” he said whimsically, and out loud for no discernible reason, before taking a chest from under his wardrobe and opening it, to rifle through the pungent aromatic oils therein and find something suitable for the day.

“Trixie?” Twilight’s voice penetrated the room from the atop basement staircase. “Are you ready, yet?”

“Oh sh-” Trixie muttered, glancing quickly between his clothes, his perfumes, and his naked form. He thought for a moment, and answered, “Yes!”

Twilight sighed heavily upon hearing the ensuing commotion.

Mefisto in Newsprint

“We could eat at Aery Squall’s café on Mistral Street,” suggested Twilight, stepping gracefully into the cool morning air. “She makes that baklava you like,” she added, smiling as she turned to face her stallion, Trixie, who followed her outside and winced at the sun’s dazzling rays.

“Pegasus food would be a little heavy for breakfast, don’t you think?” Trixie said, nuzzling Twilight while they sat on the porch, apricating as a cool breeze shot over their huddled bodies. Generally speaking, pegasi had faster rates of metabolism than unicorns.

After a few moments of contemplation, Twilight agreed, saying, “You’re right, it would be. Especially on a cold day like this one.” She affectionately wrapped her forelegs around Trixie’s warm barrel, her hooves barely meeting at the stallion’s back. “Where do you think we should eat breakfast, Trixie?”

Ponyville, despite the bucolic origin and industry of its putative Earth Pony founders, was host to a healthy populace of Pegasus and Unicorn artists and artisans, and so hosted a diverse selection of bistros and brasseries acceptable to the palette of two young lovers borne of Canterlot patricians. While life on the road quickly instilled in Trixie the value of food as sustenance (as opposed to entertainment), he still found pleasure in sampling the local fare on his travels, and so developed a taste for the gastronomically exotic. When he first found himself living (against his will) in Ponyville, he spent most of the free time Twilight allotted him exploring the cosmopolitan eateries of the town, and their menus.

Trixie thought for a moment, gingerly running a hoof up and down Twilight’s crest, before answering, “Earth Pony food would be nice, but the restaurants are always busy.” Twilight vocalized her agreement with a soft ‘m-hm.’ She didn’t like crowds; and neither did Trixie, unless he was the focus of their attention.

“There are a few dining parlours around Rarity’s boutique that are always quiet; we could go take a look at them,” proffered Twilight, pulling away from their embrace and giving Trixie a peck on the cheek. By ‘around Rarity’s boutique’ she meant ‘in the Unicorn part of town,’ but Trixie had noticed months ago that Twilight abstained from the use of such labels, which she considered crass and he considered honest.

“Then lead our way, Twi-light of my life,” Trixie grinned at Twilight cutely rolling her eyes and stepping away to lead them further into Ponyville. Stalling for just a moment, he turned to gander the day’s issue of the Ponyville Express resting below the mailbox (where mailmare Derpy dropped correspondences of too little import to warrant Spike disgorging them). He levitated the paper just below eye level and trotted up to walk beside Twilight. Trixie abhorred newspapers, and only actually read them if he was the subject of an article, but Twilight had many friends and acquaintances in town and ostensibly reading a newspaper was insurance against getting pulled into a conversation between her and some other mare on their way.

Trixie had no use for casual conversation, found most topics of discussion vapid, and was more accustomed to talking at ponies than with them. Twilight was the only other pony in town to whom he could really speak (and sometimes Spike, who had gleaned a small degree of intellectual acumen from Twilight).

The worst contingency Trixie could imagine in this scenario was Twilight striking up a conversation with some mare that had a stallion of her own in tow. He would be obliged to converse with the other fellow; and in doing so endure several minutes of small talk over buckball or local politics, or some other means by which average ponies procrastinate for death.

Trixie’s ruminations were cut short by the friendly greetings Twilight and Cheerilee exchanged as the latter trotted up to greet them. Cheerilee, who Trixie regarded as intelligent but not enlightened, was Ponyville’s school teacher (having earned a degree from some college in Canterlot of which Trixie had never heard) and one of Twilight’s closer friends. Like mares do, they thought his made Trixie a friend of Cheerilee’s by extension. Trixie had sense enough not to point out that this wasn’t the case.

Just before the mares settled into their friendly chat, Trixie stared intensely at the newspaper he’d brought along. Entire seconds passed before it occurred to him that he could read the paper, and the need to alleviate his leaden boredom outweighed his distaste for the rag. Surreptitiously flipping through the leaves of pulp (so as to not betray the real purpose of his reading it) he glimpsed a disturbing image between the front page and the comic section.

In a set of pages dedicated to intrigue in Canterlot (the gravitational locus of all political power in Equestria), Trixie saw a short article wherein it was related that Croix Lulamoon, Trixie’s eldest brother, had risen from the position of chancery clerk to Vice Chancellor in service to Celestia’s Court. The article was adorned by a monochrome photo in newsprint depicting Croix stood next to their father Halifax; who held a similar position in the High Court of Admiralty (which dealt more in commerce than the small fleet of zeppelins Canterlot maintained), and whose once azure coat was blanching with age.

The ‘tradition’ of names containing with the letter ‘X’ was started by Admiral Xeryus Lulamoon (Halifax’s father), though Trixie found it beneath the dignity of his erstwhile distinguished geniture.

“Trixie?” Cheerilee’s voice intruded on Trixie’s thoughts before they could coalesce and devolve into seething angst.

“Huh?” Trixie uttered, without even a minute trace of the charismatic loquacity or showmanship Cheerilee (and many other ponies) had come to expect of him.

“How has it been coming along with Snips and Snails?” asked Cheerilee. “I know you’ve been helping them with their magic act for the talent show, next weekend.”

Trixie, dismissing the failure of his gambit with the newspaper, expertly dropped into the persona he’d developed for the ponies around town. “Trixie, master that he is of both pedagoguery and prestidigitation, has found those colts to be beyond help—but he has no doubt they’ll put on an entertaining show,” spake Trixie, with several minor gesticulations accompanying the statement.

Cheerilee and Twilight both smirked, but only the former followed up, saying, “That’s good to hear! I know they can be a hoofful, but those colts really look up to you.” Almost all of the fillies and colts in Ponyville adored Trixie, who kept a place in his heart for children; even during his first miserable weeks there, Trixie would sometimes abandon his sullen attitude and perform small, impromptu magic acts for the kids in town.

Snips and Snails, though, were the only ones who made the mistake of viewing Trixie as a role model. Trixie had taught them some amateur, entry-level illusions and simple japes using legerdemain; a far cry from the death defying escapes he had performed onstage, but instructing the colts was an entertaining way to spend a few afternoons, and it kept him Twilight’s good graces.

“It was Trixie’s good fortune to meet many skilled illusionists and magicians in his travels, who charitably taught him their techniques,” began Trixie, lying through his teeth. “It is only… karmic, that he pass on this knowledge to the next generation, undeserving though they may be.”

Trixie’s own magic act, for the several short years it existed, mainly consisted not of illusions but feats exhibiting both the stallion’s cognitive acuity and his power over the miraculous potential of magic. The show would begin with the usual exercises, such as performing mathematical operations faster than adding machines, or quoting pages of literary classics verbatim, with both tricks using numbers called out by the audience; this would be followed by demonstrations of mindreading and clairvoyance, then mesmeric operations, before ultimately culminating in the visual spectacle of Trixie performing an awesome and obscure (but easily executed) spell he’d learned in his study of the ancient unicorns.

Toward his last few months as a stage magician, Trixie was even performing healings on stage, so consumed was he with his own power; and this resulted in his being called a charlatan—tarnishing his celebrity among the common ponies. (Healing magic was mythical among Equestrians, as the art had gone extinct three millennia prior, with the fall of the High Unicorns and their flight from the desecrated Island.)

“And they’ll need you at the talent show,” Twilight interjected. “To support them.”

Trixie shrugged and the mares exchanged a few more words before goodbyes were said, both parties going their separate ways. Trixie, in spite of his many journeys there and back again, had no mind for directions (probably due to his incessantly wandering attention), and asked Twilight how close they were to their destination.

The mare, smirking, replied thusly, “Twilight thinks she and Trixie are about halfway there.”

This was meant to be a playful gibe at Trixie referring to himself in the third person during their talk with Cheerilee, but he could detect a note of exasperation in Twilight’s voice. She considered it a triumph of his rehabilitation, when she successfully adjured him to speak as normal ponies do. While he only spoke in the first person to Twilight and her best friends, this small change proved that she could alter his behavior for the better.

Trixie only nuzzled her in response. Even that infinitesimal scintilla of irritation in Twilight’s words sent his mind spiraling, trying to calculate the hidden semantics and psychological implications of all possible responses to the joke, and in which lied the healthiest course of action. Overwhelmed, instinct demanded Trixie keep quiet and nuzzle her. Twilight must have sensed this, because she came to a full halt and comforted him.

After a tender, wordless moment of affection, the couple continued on their way.

Twilight, like most other ponies, had mistaken Trixie’s habit of speaking in the third person as the vainglorious affectation of an emotionally fragile megalomaniac. But, while certain parts of that statement may hold water, the true reason for this idiosyncrasy lay in a realm totally opposite to the initial assumption. Yisrach, Trixie’s wizened and sage master, taught him that one of secrets to true magic lay in the realization that all experiential phenomena are explicated not by the intelligence of the magician, but the persona that houses the intelligence. Therefore, the true magician must extricate his notion of himself (and selfness itself) from the shell of his earthly persona. Master impelled Trixie to refer to himself (or, rather, his physical manifestation,) as ‘Trixie,’ and to never say ‘I,’ as a way of inculcating his apprentice into this way of thinking.

When Master was alive, he’d discipline Trixie for referring to himself as ‘I,’ with physical punishment when they were together in person, or with telepathic assaults when Trixie was away from the Island. Therein lay the reason Trixie couldn’t explain his habit to Twilight, who would not only have been heartbroken to hear her love was taught using such methods (which he was sure she would mistake for abuse), but also would have ‘gotten the wrong idea’ about his master. So, while Trixie loved his master a great deal and hated to disobey him (even in death), Trixie also loved Twilight, and was willing to make exceptions to his master’s rules for her sake.

They had arrived in what lesser minds referred to as the ‘uniquarter’ of Ponyville, and Twilight had been saying something about one of the cafes when Trixie realized he wasn’t paying attention to her.

“What do you think, sweetie?” Twilight queried, facing one of the pearly edifices that dominated the architecture of the unicorn part of town, then turning to smile at Trixie.

“Uh, yes. I agree,” Trixie laid a light kiss on her cheek.

“Alright, it’s just one more block away,” said Twilight, who then continued to guide them further. Trixie hid his relief.

Trotting down the obliquely set, square cut cobblestone roads endemic to unicorn cityscape, Twilight was the first to see the trio of Spike, Rarity and Sweetie Belle also en route to some unknown destination. Once Rarity caught sight of Twilight, the two groups quickly converged and exchanged warm greetings; with Twilight inquiring as to the quality of Spike’s night at the Carousel Boutique, and receiving concurrent answers from everypony save Trixie (who wasn’t entertaining any profound thoughts at the moment, but still seemed miles away from the conversation).

“Oh, I’m just going to treat Spike and Sweetie Belle to a breakfast at Taillevent’s Bistro, for their help last night putting together next year’s spring line,” spoke Rarity in the faux-urbane cant she liked to affect.

“How serendipitous; Trixie and I are also on our way to have breakfast,” Twilight began. “Is Taillevent’s Bistro the one on Lil-”

“Oh?” Rarity interrupted, a hoof rising to cover her mischievous grin. With a telling glance darting between Twilight and Trixie, she asked, “Did you not have anything planned for breakfast, last night?”

Twilight was piqued by the question, and Trixie recognized there was a hidden layer to the mares’ exchange, but he couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of it.

“Well, I was thinking we could all have breakfast together, since we’ve run into each other,” Twilight hoped to sidestep the issue, along with any more of Rarity’s vexing double entendres.

“That would be marvelous! Sweetie, what do you think?” asked Rarity, glancing back at her sister. Both Spike and Sweetie Belle answered, voicing their approval.

Sweetie Belle climbed onto Trixie’s back and Spike deigned to continue walking next to Rarity, and in this fashion the blessing of unicorns and one whelpling made their way.

Rarity and Sweetie Belle were descendants of the detachment of Canterlot unicorns that travelled down the mountain to economize and administrate the array of Earth Pony farms that made up what would later become Ponyville, and also to arrange for the Pegasus weather service to most efficiently organize the atmospheric phenomena upon which the whole enterprise depended. As upper-middle class unicorns would often do, they adopted some of the other tribes’ customs, as evinced by Rarity and Sweetie Belle’s names, which had an earthen ring to Trixie’s ear.

But Trixie wasn’t one to cast stones where names were concerned. ‘Beatrix,’ was actually an archaic Pegasus name, and a mare’s one at that. Trixie didn’t know whether to ascribe this to his father’s malice, or ignorance, but Twilight was the only other pony in Trixie’s life who knew the origin of his name, and she kept the secret in strict confidence (though she often reminded him it was a silly thing to be ashamed over).

(The entire trend of modern Ponies’ naming conventions began with the Unicorns, almost three thousand years before Ponyville’s founding; when the High Unicorn Autarch Ulaamun L’israch, called ‘Ulaamun the Firstblessed’ due to his being the first unicorn to wield magic after the Dying of Ulaam, declared his name too holy to be said by any ponies other than the Priests of the Dying God; and so issued a writ decreeing all his subjects [whom he considered to be all living things] were to refer to him only as ‘Golden Dawn’. This notion caught like wildfire among ponies of all tribes, and soon everypony had both a primary and a secondary name. Three centuries before Trixie’s birth, pony legal tradition had dispensed with the use of primary names, and infants were only given secondary names at birth. The family Lulamoon, just as quixotic then as ever, acted to contradict this trend by only giving their children primary names.)

Besides, Trixie had a fondness for Rarity and Sweetie Belle. Rarity was the only one of Twilight’s friends who didn’t make him win her over when he first came to Ponyville, and again when they needed to approve of him dating Twilight; and Sweetie Belle was just a little angel, as far as it concerned Trixie.

It was a quiet morning for the tastefully decorated bistro when the party arrived, so they had their pick of seating and were given attentive service. As they settled around a table comfortably positioned in a corner and afront two large windows, Rarity politely called Trixie’s name.

“Would you mind terribly if I had a peek at your copy of the Express, darling?” asked Rarity, and Trixie was happy to oblige—levitating the paper from the recess between his shirt and cardigan, where he’d forgotten he had tucked it, to the mare who plucked it from the air with her own, less trained telekinesis.

The party settled into their seats and studied their menus, remarking to one another on the restaurant’s good qualities.

Trixie ordered stuffed grape leaves fried in fish oil and served on a bed of chard. Though epicurean, it wasn’t the most expensive item on the selection, and he had already partaken of it months prior. The price made little difference to him, anyway; Trixie was certain Twilight would pay, because even if she didn’t volunteer to do so, he had already spent all the money she’d given him for that week’s allowance. Trixie hoped it wouldn’t come to his confessing to it, but he didn’t understand why it upset her, anyway, when he couldn’t make the money last. Twilight received a generous pension signed by Celestia herself every month, so it wasn’t as though she was earning any of it.

“Sweetie Belle?” Rarity said, reading the newspaper as the group waited for breakfast to be served.

“Yeah, sis?” replied Sweetie.

“Does Father still read the paper during meals?” Rarity looked over to her sister.

“Yeah, and Mom still gets mad at him over it,” Sweetie and Rarity both shared a chuckle.

Trixie felt Twilight wrap her forelegs around one of his own, and cradle her head on the side of his neck. Then it occurred to him that if there were one section of the paper (besides the horoscopes) that would appeal to Rarity, it would be the section containing news from Canterlot—and the article on his brother.

When the subject of his family first came up, after he ‘moved in’ with Twilight, she tenderly urged him to entertain the notion of reconciling with his father and brothers. Trixie considered emotional outbursts and crying tantrums to be the tools of a master diplomat, so it wasn’t long before Twilight knew better than to even mention somepony, other than Trixie, named ‘Lulamoon’.

As it occurred to Trixie, Twilight should have known better than anypony how awful his family had been during his childhood—she had known him since they were nine years old, after all.

The experiment here, for Trixie, was to observe how Rarity reacted to reading about upjumped little Croix. If she mentioned it to him over breakfast, all affairs would be copacetic, but if she knew better, that would move to confirm a suspicion Trixie had developed: that Twilight had been telling her friends about his quarrels with his father and siblings. ‘Airing dirty laundry,’ as the earth ponies would say; and while Trixie was certain Twilight would have only done this with good intentions, he recoiled at the idea of appearing as anything but superequine, and above petty familial squabbles.

“Oh, Trixie, did you read? Your brother is Vice Chancellor,” Rarity held the folded-over paper so as to display the printed photo, and Trixie felt Twilight unconsciously tighten her grip on his foreleg. “And only a few months after your father gave that statement saying how ‘you had scandalized the entire family.’”

Trixie, not as relieved as he suspected he would be, dismissed the entire line of discussion with a wave of his hoof, solemnly declaring, “They aren’t my family.” Twilight kissed his cheek, in support.

Sweetie Belle, who had been in thought trying to discern what would drive Trixie’s father to make such a statement, innocently asked, “Oh! Did he say that because of the thing you did in Canterlot?”

Spike, who had been hitherto quietly admiring Rarity’s highly evolved method of reading newspapers, chimed in, endeavoring to alter the course of the conversation, saying, “Hey, uh, I th-”

“No, Sweetie, Halifax isn’t conscionable enough to care about that,” vociferated Trixie, authoritatively and in a callous monotone. “Halifax and his imbecilic spawn felt slighted that Celestia placed me in Twilight’s custody, as opposed to summarily executing or petrifying me like they would have preferred.”

Sweetie Belle seemed nonplussed by his tone. “What could they have against Twilight? She’s one of the nicest ponies I know,” she continued, oblivious to the negativity these questions and their answers promulgated.

“The idiots don’t even know her, they just think Twilight’s family isn’t noble or pure blooded enough to justify her holding power over a Lulamoon,” said Trixie. Twilight’s family, though well-bred, only entered nobility five-hundred years before her birth; when Twilight Nebula, a court wizard to Celestia, was granted peerage after serving as Treasurer of the Exchequer for an entire century. “There’s also faction of magicians in Celestia’s Court who believe it’s wrong; due to my being a five-point unicorn, whereas she’s a six-point unicorn.”

“Let’s not talk about this, Trixie,” Twilight delicately interjected, running her hoof along Trixie’s back as she nuzzled him.

“You’re ri-” Trixie began, and harshly, before catching himself and softening his tone. He took Twilight’s hoof in his own and, without looking at her face, gently said, “You’re right, Twilight; I’m ruining breakfast. Forgive me.” Trixie punctuated this apology by raising her hoof (which he thought looked small and fragile when held in his own) to his mouth and lightly kissing it.

“Don’t be silly,” Twilight was embarrassed, but not enough to stop him.

Sweetie Belle, who was smiling girlishly at the scene, chimed in once more, “Could I ask one more question?”

“Sweetie,” chided Rarity, lightly, satisfied that she had her own fun.

“It’s fine. Ask away, Sweetie Belle,” Twilight slid her hoof from Trixie’s, and casually nuzzled him.

“What do you mean by ‘five-point’ and ‘six-point?’” Sweetie Belle was now looking to Twilight instead of Trixie for an answer.

“Ooh, this should interest you: it has to do with cutie marks!” Twilight began, with Sweetie now listening intently. “You know how only unicorns can get cutie marks in magic? Well, statistically, about ten percent of all unicorns do—have a special talent for magic, that is—and every cutie mark for magic depicts a type of star. By ‘star,’ I mean the geometrical polygon,” she explained, looking once to see Sweetie nodding enthusiastically. “Of the ten percent of magic cutie marks (and the magicians who have them), seventy-four percent have eight-pointed stars, eighteen percent have seven-pointed stars, seven-point-five percent have six-pointed stars—like me—and the remaining half-of-one percent of all unicorn magicians have five-pointed stars; like Trixie and Star Swirl the Bearded.”

Twilight neglected to mention that the reason there were so few five-point unicorns: of those rare births, most die in infancy, due to their manifest forms being unable to efficiently center the gravity of the baleful energies unleashed when five-point cutie marks appear. But such things are not for a little girl’s ears to hear.

“There’s a belief among magicians,” Twilight continued. “Which started with the ancient High Unicorns, before we all left the Island,” she glanced knowingly at Trixie, before returning her gaze to Sweetie Belle, “That the lower the number of points on a magician’s star cutie mark, or the ‘closer they are to unity’ as the ancient sorcerers said, the greater the magician’s ability and intelligence.”

She could have mentioned the ancient belief that the only way for a higher-point unicorn to become a superior, lower-point unicorn was to live virtuously and, through metempsychosis, be rewarded with a holier incarnation after death. But perhaps it was wiser not to try explaining this to a child.

Trixie quickly interpolated an elucidation of his own, adding, “Among the High Unicorns, three thousand years ago, only five-pointers and six-pointers were allowed to enter the priesthood, and there again, only five-point priests were allowed to become archpriests or sorcerer-king, like the Firstblessed.”

“Oh,” Sweetie Belle uttered, and Trixie felt a charge in the air, reminiscent of the hours just before the weather service brings down a thunderstorm. “Trixie, is it true? That five-point unicorns are smarter and better at magic than six-point unicorns?” Sweetie asked, having inherited certain tendencies Trixie recognized in her elder sister.

“S-sweetie Belle!” Rarity laughed, trying to scold her. Twilight was shaking her head, one hoof wrapped around Trixie’s foreleg and another covering her own abashed grin.

Trixie had foreseen this as soon as Sweetie asked about the point system, and he required no clairvoyance to do so. Just like the five-point archpriests of yore, Trixie had been preparing himself to make the following sacrifice, “No, it isn’t true. Twilight’s smarter than I am, and I reckon she’d be more talented with magic if it all came down to dust.” His only solace after making this concession was a conciliatory kiss on the cheek from Twilight, and his own desperately conjured memories of last night’s events.

“Woah!” Spike couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “Did the great and powerful Trixie really just say that somepony else was-”

“Spike!” Twilight rebuked the whelping (much more successfully than Rarity had tried to do with Sweetie), and looked to the filly, saying, “What Trixie meant to say was: that intelligence and ability and our perceptions of these things are all subjective, and there’s no way to prove if one pony is better than another. And even if that weren’t the case, Celestia has an eight-point star and it’s been agreed that she’s the most powerful magician alive.”

“Yes, and don’t forget,” Rarity held up the newspaper again, looking at Sweetie. “Zodiac Luster is an eight-point unicorn, and her horoscopes have never been wrong.”

Trixie heard Twilight sigh softly as Rarity undermined her point, then heard their waitress trotting up to the table with several dishes. Within a few minutes, they had all started dining, with the topic of the prior conversation giving way to lighter discussion.

Though, during a lull in the new talk, Rarity asked, “Trixie, could I ask you something?”

“Please, do.”

“Do you know of any other living unicorns with five-pointed star cutie marks?”

Trixie paused, in deep contemplation, before answering, “I did, at one time, and personally. But his body was old, and it had served its purpose, so he let it die some time ago. As to what remains of him, and where he might now dwell, I can only speculate.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be. As I said, he had served his purpose, and chose to die on his own terms. We should all be so lucky, to choose the hour of our deaths.”

The Peppernoder of Stepanchikovo

“Do you think Mrs. Cake has started making her gingerbread cakes, yet?” asked Spike, sat on Twilight’s back while the mare sauntered along the way to Sugarcube Corner.

“I don’t know, but there’s one way to find out,” answered Twilight. After breakfast, Rarity decided to walk her little sister back to their parent’s abode further up town, and Trixie went to see if Blue Amberol’s record shop had a couple new albums he had been waiting on; so Twilight thought it would be nice to treat her number-one-assistant to dessert at the Cakes’ bakery. “You know, it technically isn’t real gingerbread; she makes it from oatmeal and treacle.”

“Yeah, uh huh,” Spike wasn’t listening.

Twilight rolled her eyes and continued down the road to the commercial district. They were headed to the bakery because she wanted to treat Spike (whom Twilight feared she had been neglecting, as of late), but also to pick up a treat for Trixie, who seemed perturbed after breakfast, even if he tried to hide it.

Trixie, though he desperately tried to believe himself as enlightened and spiritually liberated as his magic act portrayed him to be, was a tangled ball of frayed emotions and shame; and few things made him unravel as quickly as hearing about his father and brothers. While Twilight did her best to help him work through these feelings, Trixie had spent over six years, essentially, living alone, and accordingly wasn’t well-versed in emotional introspection (beyond the purely philosophical). But, Twilight loved Trixie, and considered it her sacred duty as his ‘special somepony’ to pick up the pieces his ‘master’ had left him in and fashion those into a functioning pony.

“Isn’t that Applejack’s cart?” Spike pointed down the thoroughfare at the rustic wagon parked afront Sugarcube Corner, as if Twilight couldn’t have seen it otherwise.

“Yes, I believe it is,” Twilight answered, having already spotted the cart and deducing its ownership, long before the dragon spoke up.

The duo continued to the bakery’s entrance, Spike hopping down to scurry up before the display case (next to Applebloom) as soon as they crossed the threshold.

“Nah, I don’t think Granny would go in for somethin’ as hifalutin as that. Ain’t it somethin’ unicorns make?” Applejack was speaking to Mrs. Cake over the counter, trying as politely as she could to decline some seasonal kindness the older mare was offering.

“Well, maybe you, Applebloom and Big Mac could have the apple tartes and we could make something separate for Granny Smith,” Mrs. Cake was having none of it.

“Oh, no, that’d be going through way too much trouble.”

“Please, Applejack, you and your family have always treated us very fairly; let us do this one, small thing for you.”

Thousands of years of bucolic, agrarian living had bred this neighborly kindness into Earth Ponies, and Twilight couldn’t help but to smirk at their exchange. It seemed so alien to a mare who had grown up in Canterlot.

“Well, I suppose… It wouldn’t hurt anythin’ if I, uh,” Applejack was casually swivelling her head, looking to make sure no patrons would overhear what she was sure was a scandalous conversation. In doing so, she caught sight of Twilight.

“Hey, sugarcube!” Applejack smiled and trotted over for a friendly nuzzle, realizing Twilight’s arrival may serve as an excuse to decline the Cakes’ gift. “What’cha up to?”

“Oh, I was just going to get something for Spike,” Twilight said nonchalantly, stepping over to the display case nearest to Mrs. Cake’s counter while Spike surveilled sweets further down the line.

“Just for Spike?” asked Mrs. Cake, chiming in, as the bakery wasn’t particularly busy that day, and she enjoyed conversing with Twilight.

“And some sweets for Trixie, too,” Twilight felt the mood change around the other two mares, and she realized only seconds too late that the correct answer was, ‘and something for myself.’

“Mhm, what’s wrong with him now?” AJ asked, and perhaps a little more harshly than she intended.

“Applejack, please,” Twilight chided. Ever since that first year at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, Twilight felt a need to protect Trixie, even if it was from one of her best friends. “Trixie’s upset because he saw the Express has run an article on his family, today.”

“The article didn’t say anything bad about the Lulamoons; I read it,” said Mrs. Cake, not quite ‘clued in’.

“That’s not it, Missus Cake, Trixie just doesn’t get on with his kin,” Applejack replied, dismissively.

“Applejack!” said Twilight, not realizing she had raised her voice until it was done. She glanced over to see Spike and Applebloom still obliviously scanning the sweets. She continued, in a slightly more sedate tone, “That isn’t for you to say.”

“Aw, everypony knows, Twi,” Applejack shrugged under her ratty denim jacket.

“I didn’t,” retorted the older mare. Turning to Twilight, she asked, “Why doesn’t Trixie get along with his family?”

Only now did Twilight realize she’d tripped into a session of small town gossip, for which earth ponies were infamous (though Twilight would never admit this, even to herself), with her own special somepony as the first case on the docket. Thinking quickly, Twilight decided the more discrete option to extricate both herself and Trixie from the conversation was to appease Mrs. Cake’s curiosity.

“Well, Trixie’s father just wasn’t very nice to him, even at the beginning,” Twilight said, every nerve aching with guilt, but she saw no safer option than to continue. “Trixie thinks it’s because his father doubted Trixie was actually his son.”

“But they all look so much alike; he, his father and his brother,” Mrs. Cake had probably seen their picture in the paper. “I mean, I’m sorry to hear that, about their relationship.”

Trixie did inherit the azure coat and silvery mane all Lulamoons sported (and for thousands of years), but that was where his similarity to his father and brothers ended. Trixie, in addition to being exponentially more intelligent than his family, possessed an epicene beauty beyond anything the latest generation of Lulamoons (and many other families) could boast, and was also taller and generally more well proportioned than his immediate family. It occurred to Twilight that Trixie inherited all of the traits ascribed to the ancient Lulamoons, long before their pristine gene pool stagnated and resulted in his very average father and brothers.

(From the age twelve onward, when Trixie had blossomed [thanks to an early puberty], he spent his last two years in Canterlot using his superior size and intelligence to emotionally terrorize and physically abuse his brothers and father, whom both nature and experience had failed to furnish with any defenses against a strapping, hormonal young genius with vengeance in his heart. Trixie and Twilight both, though, had a habit of conveniently forgetting this.)

“Could I get some of the salted toffees, please?” Spike asked either Twilight or Mrs. Cake; it was hard to tell. He had waddled over to the mares, Applebloom following, and the prior conversation was immediately, unceremoniously dropped.

“Sure thing, Spike,” Mrs. Cake set to work packing the confections, while Twilight levitated a few bits from her saddlebag. “Anything else, dear?”

Spike was beginning to say ‘no’ when Twilight answered, “Half a batch of butterscotch cookies, and half a batch of peppernut cookies, if that’s possible, please.”

Jackals and Saddle Arabians (or, Civilization Phaze III)

Trixie had a line of credit at Blue Amberol’s record store, a music shop in the Unicorn canton of Ponyville, which was actually owned and operated by Blue’s grandson; a pegasus who called himself Moccasin. Trixie, the only customer in the store, was stood at the back ostensibly perusing the latest exhibitions of the no-wave sub-genre of art punk; but really trying to work up the courage to speak to Moccasin (about an order he had placed for a foreign record).

Though Trixie had spent many years developing his charismatic persona as a stage magician, and trained every conversational mannerism to transmit that commanding, mesmeric quality with which he was born, Yisrach made certain Trixie would never forget his every action was just that: part of an act. So now, before every social interaction (save those shared with ponies especially close to him) Trixie had to work himself into his arrogating stage persona, which the world over knew as ‘The Great and Powerful Trixie.’ This is what Trixie was doing, while Moccasin read some magazine behind the counter; Trixie was performing any number idiomatic, mental rituals to convince himself he truly was the apple of everypony’s eye.

Satisfied he had attained the state, or donned the mask, Trixie trotted proudly up to the counter.

Moccasin set aside the magazine. “Hey, Trix, that album you ordered came in.”

“Trixie has come to inquire as to the state of his order for-” Trixie began, before catching himself, “Oh.”

“Yeah, lemme get that for you,” Moccasin stepped away from the counter and disappeared into the small back room behind it.

Trixie found it unusual that a pegasus would not only own a store in the Unicorn quarter, but a record store. Unicorns had many ancient, magical techniques for capturing audial and visual phenomena, and invented almost all ‘non-magical’ methods of doing the same; so most industries pertaining to music were monopolized by unicorns. It would have been difficult for a pegasus to run a store specializing in records (even Trixie had to admit unicorns were the most clannish of the three tribes).

The most probable explanation was that Blue Amberol himself was a unicorn, and that his pegasus grandson, Moccasin, was the result of what unicorns called ‘miscegenation’.

“Here you go, Trix,” Moccasin had emerged with a shrink-wrapped record in hoof and presented it to Trixie. “I got a demo of it for the store. It’s… pretty gnarly,” Moccasin, like most stallions around town, thought he was a friend of Trixie’s.

“Oh, yes. When Trixie first heard it, he was made to recall the sonorist movement of composers in Whorlsaw. Very experimental,” said Trixie, knowing Moccasin would take this as an invitation to begin a conversation about music (and it wasn’t), so he continued. “Trixie would have you charge this to the store’s credit; or, ‘put it on his tab,’ as it were.”

“Sure thing, bud,” Moccasin, smirking, jotted down an invoice while Trixie examined the album’s artwork. “How has the wizard business been?” asked the pegasus, making small talk as he filled out the little slip of paper.

“Oh, it’s fascinating,” answered Trixie, wondering if Moccasin would understand the wordplay.

“Is it lucrative?” asked Moccasin, nonchalantly.

“If you mean monetarily, then no,” Trixie saw the pegasus’s mouth contort into some kind of smirk, and wondered if the pun finally struck him.

Moccasin kept his eyes down, looking at the invoice, and asked, trying not to laugh, “So, uh, did you spend all of your allowance? The one that Twilight gives you?”

“Who told you that about me?” asked Trixie. He would forgive Moccasin for that trespass, as the pegasus intended it as an innocent gibe between friends; but more than once, and he would have to be punished.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Moccasin handed the receipt to Trixie, who snatched it from his hoof with magic and secreted it away in a pocket.

“I can believe a lot of things; just tell me who told you that,” Trixie, though he entertained a more-or-less good reputation among the other stallions of Ponyville, had to suffer many jokes and teasing by them over his living arrangement with Twilight.

(Among the salt-of-the-earth, working class stallions of Ponyville, it was seen as very peculiar for a grown stallion, even if he were unemployed [like Trixie], to be financially supported by a mare. Especially so if that mare were the stallion’s girlfriend. So, it was only natural that Trixie had to tolerate many ‘friendly’ japes about his mode of living. Most commonly, the other stallions would tease Trixie by calling him ‘Mister Twilight’ or, more derisively, ‘Missus Twilight’.)

“It was, uh,” Moccasin scanned the street outside through the store’s massive display window. “It was Big Mac,” he whispered.

“Oh, that cros-” Trixie started, but reined himself in before a scene could be made. “Well, don’t you worry; I know--Trixie knows many secrets Big Mac would like to hide,” Trixie, of course, knew none of Big Mac’s secrets. Though he did entertain many suspicions about Mac’s lifestyle preferences.

“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad,” said Moccasin, familiar as anypony with Trixie’s antics and how far he was willing to take them.

“Trixie alone will decide the severity of lies promulgated against his name,” spake the great and powerful Trixie.

“Oh, please. Trixie, you make fun of other ponies more than anyone in town, and I know a lot of times you think you’re being funny, but you’re really just being mean,” Moccasin managed to say this is a congenial way, so as to not draw Trixie’s ire, himself. But, he wasn’t entirely correct in saying this, as Trixie knew full well that he was the only pony who found his cruel mocking humorous, even if he (poorly) hid it under the guise of affable ribbing.

“Trixie hears enough of that at home, he doesn’t need it at the record store,” said Trixie after a pause, his lips curling into a grin.

Moccasin laughed, “I guess you have a point. How is Twilight, anyway? Has she told her folks about you? Your relationship, I mean.”

“Twilight is with Trixie, so of course, she’s doing very well. A very lucky mare. And yes, she has refrained from informing her family of her relationship with Trixie,” answered the unicorn. Twilight’s reason for not telling her parents and brother about she and Trixie lay in a fear that Celestia might reconsider the terms of both Trixie’s reformation and Twilight’s apprenticeship to her (Celestia) if she ever caught wind of their relationship. Even so, Trixie frequently ‘chose’ to forget this.

“I’m sorry, man. Do they not like you?” asked Moccasin, without tact.

“Twilight’s family was very fond of Trixie when he was a child, going to school with Twilight. That may have changed when Trixie used his baleful and terrible magics to assail Canterlot a-little-less-than a year ago, but who can say?” Trixie began. “I suppose, uh, Trixie supposes that they themselves could say whether or not they dislike him, but that’s a difficult question to ask. Shining Armor, Twilight’s older brother, was Captain of the Royal Guard during that conflict, and still holds that position.”

“So he would have a personal vendetta against you, is what you’re saying?” Moccasin caught on.

“Yes, it is suspected,” affirmed Trixie. “If any of this reaches the point of absurdity, though, Trixie has a plan to force Twilight to admit her love for him.”

“Oh yeah?”

“‘Yeah,’ indeed. Twilight can sometimes, when it comes to her Trixie, be very jealous over other mares eyeing him, he’s noticed,” spoke Trixie, his smirk now a satisfied grin. In a world where seventy-five percent of all births are female, most mares felt a need to protect their lone right to a stallion’s affection; and this commingled poorly with Twilight’s immense capacity for worry and pedanticism. “And the Canterlot Canticle runs a biannual poll for Equestria’s most eligible bachelor.”

“Oh, no,” said Moccasin, smiling enthusiastically.

“Oh, yes,” Trixie had done worse things in his life, but he had no real intention of pulling such an asinine stunt. While it did injure him, emotionally, that Twilight hid their relationship from her family (and almost everypony else in Canterlot), he loved Twilight far too much to subject her to even a fraction of the embarrassment and pain such an action would precipitate. But playing pretend with an idiot in a record shop never hurt anyone. “And Trixie is a very beautiful, sensitive stallion; and also a convicted felon. What mare could resist? Besides, he has many connections in printed media who could rig a poll for him.”

“Geez, Trixie. You are insane, and I love you for it,” Moccasin echoed a sentiment held by most ponies in Ponyville. “And, you, uh… y’know, you are a very handsome stallion.”

“Yes, well, um, thank you. I’m going to go listen to my record, now. Goodbye,” Trixie left record shop and started on his way back to the Golden Oak Library.

Prelude to Amor Hesternalis; the Grecian roses begin to fall...

While the noonday sun sweat its warmth into the air outside, Twilight was sat contentedly at the escritoire where she penned all her essays and letters, looking over the list of texts she needed to gather for one of her academic undertakings. Many of the drawers and compartments of the desk were unfastened, containing only writing materials; but on the right hand side, an ebony cabinet bore two striking features: the black wood from which it was fashioned contrasted darkly against the carven mahogany which comprised the rest of the desk, and there was no knob or handle by which it could be opened. Such novelties became common after unicorns began living among the other races of Equestria; want of a knob precluded non-unicorns from prying into the container’s contents, and talented sorcerers (or sorceresses, like Twilight) could easily ensorcel the ebony so that only magicians of comparable talents could access them.

Twilight opened the cabinet to reveal a neatly arranged stack of letters, to which, she had yet to reply. Most were invoices (for rare books and magical apparatuses) which she would have to forward to the court treasury, but some were personal letters from friends and family. Twilight set the invoices aside and looked over the usual correspondence from her mother, through which she was kept informed of the family’s goings-on (or, at least, what her mother knew of them); then, the odd letter from Shining Armor, or her father. Finally, Twilight unfolded a letter from one of her newer epistolary acquaintances, Morning Glory, fiancée to Trixie’s brother, Croix. Though Glory only reached out to Twilight a month prior, they had already exchanged a relatively healthy body of letters wherein they discussed their personal experiences with the family Lulamoon, and Trixie’s place in it.

Morning Glory, herself being a mare of intuition and intelligence (though not a magician), quickly divined Twilight’s feelings for, and relationship with, Trixie, after reading only two letters penned by Sparkle. As it stood, Glory was the only pony in Canterlot, to Twilight’s knowledge, who knew of the relationship.

Twilight had levitated a quill and vellum from another drawer to begin scribing a reply to Glory’s latest letter when she felt Trixie’s magical essence intermingling with the nexus of ley lines on which sat the Golden Oak Library. She returned all the letters and materials, except the invoices, to their respective containers and took special care to close the ebony cabinet. Taking the tins of cookies bought earlier, she trotted down the stairs, to the foyer.

There were spells Twilight was made to learn when she first volunteered to become Trixie’s ‘warden,’ which could have allowed her to passively intuit the stallion’s location at all times, among other vital information, by detaching a portion of her personality and affixing it, magically, to the sanctified golden ring that was fastened on Trixie’s horn. Early on, though, she decided teaching Trixie the value of trust was more important than keeping a metaphysical eye on him.

(There were other, less exacting modes of observing and controlling Trixie through the ring, which didn’t require active spellcasting. For instance, the ritual that bound the ring to Trixie and Twilight to the ring gave her the ability to paralyze Trixie’s body, or give him a painful but otherwise innocuous ‘zap’ simply by willing it. Twilight never found a reason to use these powers, and she doubted her resolve to do so even if Trixie were to provide ample cause.)

The ring’s most important and useful faculty was this: whenever Trixie cast a spell, or performed even a basic magical feat like telekinesis, Twilight instinctively became aware. No matter the circumstances, Twilight would immediately know if Trixie used magic in any way; if she were asleep, and Trixie cast a spell on the other side of the world, she would wake up. It was also Twilight’s privilege to restrict Trixie’s magic, against his will, based on her personal whims; and this was an ability she had no trouble putting into effect (as Trixie gave her many good reasons, on many occasions).

Twilight saw the ground floor empty, but felt a cool waft indicative of the front door being recently opened, and heard Spike and Trixie conversing through the half-open door to the basement. She continued, downward.

The idea of the ring had taken on a peculiar aspect after Twilight and Trixie’s romance had bloomed. When Trixie misused his gifts, it was Twilight’s responsibility to restrict his magical power, but the mercurial stallion’s crying fits and meltdowns (which punctuated these punishments) had become too emotionally painful for her to bear. Consequently, Twilight allowed Trixie to get away with much more than she ever would have had they not become romantically involved.

“I can just tell, Spike, alright?! I was in show business, I’ve seen more tr-” Trixie, album-in-hoof, stifled himself when he saw Twilight approaching.

“How do you even know he actually did it? Maybe this guy was just lying,” Spike picked up his end of the conversation, his back turned to Twilight, and Trixie dragged a hoof across his own neck, as if to say, ‘shut your trap.’

“What are we talking about?” Twilight trotted up to the duo, who were stood just outside of Trixie’s room.

“Trixie heard Big Mac was making fun of him, so he’s going to tell everybody that Big Mac likes to wear dresses,” Spike spun around, grinning. Trixie glared at the whelp and muttered some impotent malison under his breath.

Twilight could only shake her head. “Spike, go upstairs for me, okay? There are some bills on my desk I need you to mail to the treasury.”

After a moment of hesitation, “Sure thing, Twilight,” Spike said, with less enthusiasm than what would have been becoming of a number-one-assistant who had just been treated to dessert. He then waddled away, and upstairs.

Trixie was looking away, trying not to make eye contact. Once she heard the basement door click shut, Twilight asked, “Alright, Trixie, tell me what’s going on. Tell me why you’re threatening to call AJ’s brother a cross-dresser... again.” The mare motioned toward Trixie’s chambers and he opened the door to them.

The lovers entered Trixie’s bedroom and Trixie, laying on his bed, shyly elaborated, “When I was at the record store, Moccasin, the owner, graciously related to me that Big Mac has told everypony about the stipend you give me every two weeks, which he called an allowance. In a fashion so as to denigrate me.” Trixie stretched and assumed a position more suitable to lounging in bed. With many times less trepidation in his baritenor voice, he continued, “I suspect the oaf heard of my stipend from his sister; whence Applejack learned of it, I can only speculate.” Little snipes such as that were prevalent in Trixie’s verbal repertoire, but he meant this one playfully.

“M-hm… anything else?” Twilight smirked, arranging the messily arrayed piles of books on the ground into neater stacks next to the bookshelves. (As for the bookshelves themselves, she had long abandoned any designs to keep them organized; Trixie kept them arranged according the incomprehensible machinations of his eidetic memory.)

“Well, then he started hitting on me, so I left and came home,” Trixie said, nonchalantly, then levitated his new album next to his record player.

“O-oh,” Twilight, satisfied she had straightened up Trixie’s room as best as the circumstances allowed, stepped over to his bedside and examined the album for herself, saying, “Well, I’m going to talk to Applejack about it the next time I see her, and we’ll work it out. Just don’t tell anypony else about your theory, okay, honey?”

“‘Theory?’” he echoed. Lack of evidence had never stopped Trixie from proving anything, at least to himself. “You mean I shouldn’t tell the truth? That Big Mac is a transvestite?” another one of Trixie’s favorite, but ineffective tactics in conversation was the ‘last hurrah.’ “Surely that would be dishonest of me. I wonder how Applejack would feel about it.”

“Trixie…”

“I know.”

“Good,” Twilight said, levitating the two tins of cookies close and motioning for Trixie to make room in the bed. As far as she was concerned, the prior conversation had been totally resolved, and any effect it had on the afternoon’s atmosphere, dissipated. (Twilight’s relationship with Trixie necessitated her becoming adept at graceful transitions between gentle-but-firm castigation and ludic affection.)

“Y’know, I would get a job if I could, but the Enchanter’s Guild won’t let me in since I never finished magic school,” Trixie said, more to himself than to Twilight as the mare clambered onto the bed and between the silken sheets. “I imagine my felony conviction wouldn’t help my application either,” Trixie, making room, pressed his back onto the cold stone wall against which his bed stood, and Twilight pressed her back into him.

“I know, sweetheart; but I’m glad you don’t work,” Twilight nuzzled Trixie, smiling. “I enjoy being able to spend the day with you. And you’re too smart for a job, anyway,” she continued, and now Trixie was smiling. Twilight levitated one tin down to him and one into her own hooves. She said, “I got you butterscotch cookies, but you can have some of my peppernuts, if you want.”

“Thank you,” Trixie kissed her cheek.

“Let’s listen to your new album while we snuggle,” Twilight suggested, opening her tin with some minor difficulty.

Trixie, obligingly, used magic to unwrap the album and lower the record itself onto the turntable. The stylus slid into the first groove on the spinning disc and the music began to play.

Sonnet XIV

Trixie awoke, choking for air as a cascade of blood pounded through his head. His heart felt as though it would burst for the vigor of its pumping. Only a moment passed, though, before this condition ameliorated and his bodily functions recapacitated. Nocturnal panic attacks, Twilight called them (though this one wasn’t ‘nocturnal’ in the strictest sense); it was a condition Trixie had suffered since his master first initiated him into the High Unicorn mysteries. The attacks, which now rarely afflicted him, seemed to come on with stress, or anxiety; though Trixie seldom acknowledged to himself or others that he felt either way.

For many years, the symptoms presented themselves after a fashion so as to lead Trixie to believe his body was failing to breathe when he fell asleep. He thought the last-minute realization of this is what woke him, only seconds after falling asleep. It wasn’t until many years after the onset, during Trixie’s second or third night with Twilight, that she noticed he was sleeping for forty minutes at a time before waking.

Over the years, Trixie had spent many hours in thought, trying to ascertain the origin of the condition, that he might concoct a solution. Even at the age of sixteen, Trixie was already a powerful magician when Master initiated him into the mysteries, so the ensuing ecstasies and apocalypses exerted such a strain on his mind that his body nearly died. And, just as the rapture had a physical effect on him, so to did his spirit flash like a beacon to the beings that subsisted in the supersensual plane beyond the stars, where dreams are woven. According to this information, Trixie theorized a magical parasite hooked its teeth around him, that day, and was attacking him whenever he dreamt.

Trixie had his own misgivings over this theory, the most prominent being this: the notion that his master wouldn’t have foreseen such a danger and taken precautions against it before initiating the young magus. But, there again, Master was one of the great ethicists of his time, and understood that, sometimes, the only way to help somepony is to hurt them.

All Trixie’s musings on the attacks became moot when he recalled the only method of both testing his theory and excising the parasite lay in a magic ritual Twilight would not condone. He assumed she wouldn’t, anyway. Celestia had instilled in her apprentice the same fear of eldritch unicorn sorceries that the alicorn herself entertained (along with many modern magicians).

Trixie’s master had impressed on his young pupil an abhorrence for modern thought on magic. Though Celestia promulgated the ideas to many generations of unicorns during her long reign, they began with her teacher, Starswirl; who was the first to eclecticize the ancient teachings on magic with the degenerate, materialist philosophies of his time. The ancients understood, and rightly, that magic was not a tool through which to profane the will, but bridge from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge; the key by which the mind is unchained. This was also Trixie’s feeling on the matter, in contrast to his peers (except, maybe, one other).

Twilight was the most gifted and intelligent magician of the modern school, as far as it concerned Trixie, and even she struggled to allay the base superstitions that material magic had introduced to her. It would take a couple years, at least, of Trixie’s sophistical arguments and dialectic in favor of the ancients’ philosophy before Twilight would be ready to accept the edification offered by the High Unicorn religion.

But, even if that weren’t the case, necromancy, the conjuring of lower spirits, the invocation of planetary intelligences and other ancient magical practices were illegal to perform in Equestria; and some would be necessary for the ritual to deliquesce the magical parasite precipitating Trixie’s ‘nocturnal’ panic attacks.

Trixie roused himself from the bed and sat before his carven analogion, on which lay a suit of cards, each bearing a unique, intricately painted and highly symbolic ideogram. As was the High Unicorns’ design, the entire deck was magico-religious map of the universe; not the universe in the profane sense, but the philosophical universe, as a macrocosm of the magician. Modern magi scoffed at the notion, unable to divorce the truth from the image of the archetypical donkey ‘fortune teller’.

Trixie stacked the suit and placed it beside four other stacks of cards: three other suits and one stack of cards without a suit. He shuffled the suitless cards until he deigned to cut fifteen away from the remaining seven, and delicately configured the former on the analogion. The cards, of course, could be used, by ponies of little imagination, according to what was popularly called ‘divination’. But Trixie, being possessed of an especial genius, understood the cards to be, like the horn of a unicorn, a symbol or set of symbols by which the will could be made manifest.

Master said that, for a magician learned in all the complexities of the system, the cards could be just as powerful as the horn. Trixie, feeling the weight of the ring around his own horn, wished he had paid more attention when his master passed down his knowledge of the cards. The greatest phenomena Trixie had ever been to affect through them was rainmaking, or thought implantation. If Twilight could sense these spells though the ring (and he doubted she could), she never mentioned it to him.

Even when Twilight allowed Trixie free use of his magic, she would still set aside a time at the end of the day when he was expected to enumerate his every use of magic, and provide reasons for doing so. If he lied, directly or by omission, he would get an earful, and possibly have his ‘magic privileges’ revoked. Twilight was one of the few ponies who put any faith in Trixie’s photographic memory, so the usual excuse of ‘I forgot’ rarely saw success.

As he configured the cards on the analogion, Trixie’s mind wandered back to that first initiation, six years ago. When he emerged from the vault, it was as though he had forgotten all he thought he knew or understood about the world. In thoughts and images that once brought him solace, he saw only boundless and unmitigated hostility. It was as though the entire world, and all things in it, were but one massive and multiplicitous organism, that felt nothing for him but all-consuming apathy.

Gradually, this feeling receded, but just as the tide recedes to reveal the shore changed, so too did Trixie find himself irrevocably evolved. A serpent’s egg hatched in his mind, and he understood himself not as ‘Trixie’, but as a being expressed through ‘Trixie’. This notion (and the feeling accompanying it) came and went, of course, but in his most delicate moments he could look in the mirror and see somepony else; the world would become a harsh, alien place, and whenever Trixie felt something, he would feel himself feeling it, and feel himself feeling feeling it, and so on, ad infinitum.

When this quiet horror of dissociation crept into him, few things gave relief. The phenomenon was well documented in what texts remain of the High Unicorn libraries, but thousand-year-old tracts provided little succor in the throes of an existential attack. He couldn’t speak to Twilight about it. How could he? It would only worry her, and he was willing to suffer in silence if it meant Twilight could be happy.

Besides, it was enough just to be near her. The thoughts that drew him into that dreamy milieu of disconnection from the world were banished when Trixie could focus on Twilight. His love for her possessed that peculiar gravity, that could draw him away from the high and lofty, down to the safe and sensual.

Trixie often thought of himself as a dreamer, or someone trapped in a dream, wandering a bizarre, illogical landscape; and Twilight was the fine, silvery cord tethering his soul to a world where things could make sense.

Trixie cast his gaze at the fifteen cards, now fully spread on the analogion. The first card of the configuration was the sixth (or seventh) in the sequence of the suitless cards. It depicted a king and queen facing one-another, and between them lay a great egg girded by a coiled snake.

‘The Lovers.’

The Garden of Forking Paths

With a tick, the clock struck two, and from grinding mechanisms within the call of a whippoorwill echoed through the library. The clock was of such artisanal fabrication that the bird’s call was almost perfectly replicated by the totally mundane machinery, which was housed by a case lovingly carved and painted to resemble an entrance to the enchanted forest that obscured the foothills surrounding Canterlot. Such objets d’art were a common sight in unicorn homes two hundred years or so in the past, when the movement that inspired them was flourishing.

In the present, mechanical clocks were seen as antiques or, at worst, curios by the modern unicorn, who saw nothing accomplished by the machinery that magic couldn’t achieve more efficiently. Twilight felt disheartened whenever she realized this. She devoted a great deal of free time away from the study of magic to that of material physics and its applications, which she considered to be practically analogous in many ways to magic. Whether you cast a spell of flight, or build a flying machine like an aeroplane, you will achieve the same end, only by different means. That was Twilight’s thinking, anyway.

Trixie, though he also was ultimately against material science, at least understood Twilight’s convictions about its ontological juxtaposition to magic, and even shared them. Trixie’s objection arose when he interpolated his own theory, that magic which altered materia (or the magician’s interpretation of materia) was only residual of a higher magic which altered the magician’s interpretation of himself, not as an agent but as the crux of all agency (and non-agency). A notion he undoubtedly received from his obsession with the High Unicorns’ ancient religion. From there, he argued that, while material magic may be analogous to material science, magic at least offered a path to liberation of the consciousness, beyond the simple transformations of it offered by either discipline, whereas physical science did not; or, if it did, it was not one he could see clearly or follow in good faith.

While Twilight reserved judgement on Trixie’s idiomatic and phenomenological rejection of physical science and its application, she recognized that it was a conscious rejection rooted in introspective philosophy, so she could both comprehend and respect such a decision. The average unicorn, however, preferred magic over science as a result of the worst kind of ignorance (and flippantly so).

The mechanized call of the whippoorwill ended abruptly, replaced by the soft ticking it had been drowning out.

“Can’t we get a clock that doesn’t make that noise every hour?” Spike’s scaled frame emerged from the kitchen, broom and dustpan in claw.

“That ‘noise’ is the call of the Equestrian Nightjar, or whippoorwill, as it’s known colloquially, Spike,” Twilight began to her half-listening assistant. “In Equestrian unicorn folklore, the bird supposedly ushers the soul of the deceased into the next world, and during the Thistlean artistic movement these clocks were made to sound its call on the hour as a reminder of the owner’s mortality. Most ponies think it’s a very pretty song.”

“I thought it was pretty, too, the first couple hundred times,” Spike interjected, beginning to sweep the floors of the foyer, and a little late-in-the-day for Twilight’s taste. “Can’t we just get one of those clocks that just let you know what time it is, with magic? What are they called, uh…”

“Intuitional timepieces, and no,” answered Twilight, continuing before Spike could object. “Those only work for unicorns, and in case you’ve forgotten, you’re a dragon.”

“Okay, but why can’t we just get a regular clock that doesn’t make noise?” asked Spike, with a fleeting hint of indignation.

“‘Regular clocks’ are more complex than mechanical clocks, and use magical energies that would interfere with my experiments, and Trixie’s too,” Twilight explained, trying her best to avoid an air of condescension. She could have suggested any number of solutions, like hypnotizing Spike into not hearing the ticking or calls; but she knew this wasn’t really about the clock or the noise it made.

Though infrequent, these little arguments with Spike were becoming a fixture of life in the Golden Oak. Maybe it was the quiet, subconscious resentment a dragon has to feel over being raised by ponies, or perhaps he really disliked being Twilight’s assistant, despite his apparent contentedness with the situation. Maybe he was just at that age.

Then something occurred to Twilight.

“How about this: tonight, during dinner, you, Trixie and I will discuss the possibility of getting a new clock. We’ll make it a family decision,” said Twilight. This way, at least, Spike could feel like he had some say.

“He’ll just agree with you like he always does,” Spike stooped down to brush dust and detritus into the dustpan.

Twilight gingerly placed a bookmark in the novel she had been reading and closed the book. “Trixie does not always agree with me,” she stood, strolling toward the vestibule for reasons she couldn’t articulate.

“Yes, I do,” Trixie emerged from the door to the basement. Even Spike made the stairs creak when he waddled down them, so how Trixie (a stallion of prodigious proportion) was always able to sneak up and down the staircase confounded Twilight.

“Up from your nap, already?” smirked Twilight, taking a seat by the front door.

“I’ve never taken a nap in my life,” Trixie sauntered listlessly toward the table in the center of the library, casting a glance at the book Twilight had been reading. He never cared for novels.

“So this is Trixie the absurd contrarian, as opposed to the ‘laziest pony in three continents’ that he’s professed himself to be, previously,” Twilight’s intuition told her to stay by the door, but she couldn’t help but to join Trixie at the table. Wrapping a foreleg around his withers, she began nuzzling him.

Spike set his broom against a knot in the wood and turned to face the two unicorns. “Hey, Trixie, let me ask you someth-”

“Somepony’s at the door,” Trixie interrupted, deadpan, and a gentle rapping came from the other side of the painted oak of the front door.

“Come in, Fluttershy,” called Twilight, recognizing the soft knock.

A long sliver of light appeared and slowly grew between the door and wall, the outside obscured by Fluttershy’s timid countenance peeking inward. Seeing no unfamiliar faces, she gingerly trotted in, with Twilight’s pet owl, Owloysius, astride her back.

“I’d forgotten all about Owloysius’ stay with you ending today,” said Twilight, trotting to greet her friend, and Owloysius hooted dejectedly in response. “Not that I’m unhappy to have him back!” she answered, and the bird cooed, hopping from Fluttershy’s back onto hers.

“It sounds like he’s happy to be back, too,” Fluttershy smiled. “We had fun though, and I took care of that blood feather that was bothering him.”

“Oh, good—thank you, so much,” Twilight nuzzled Fluttershy lightly, a friendly gesture, and Owloysius leapt away to perch on the wooden bust in the center of the table, whence he gazed down inquisitively at Trixie reading the book Twilight left.

“Mhm, then we preened his feathers, and I trimmed those big nails of his,” Fluttershy said, walking with Twilight to take a seat at the table.

“Thank you, again. I always feel too nervous to try trimming his talons. I get afraid that I may hurt him,” Twilight reclaimed her position next to Trixie, nuzzling him lightly as a signal to stop reading and join the conversation.

“Oh, I know how you feel, but it’s easy once you learn. The next time his nails get too long I’ll show you how,” Fluttershy said, to Twilight’s nodding approval, and continued, “I... c-could teach you, too, t-... Trixie.” Fluttershy always seemed especially bashful toward Twilight’s special somepony.

“Hm? Oh, no, I don’t think so. Owloysius and I don’t see eye-to-eye,” Trixie said, with a trace of humor. “He’s always looking down on me.”

Owloysius drew a wing over his chest like a cape and hooted haughtily in response, as if playing a character, and the mares giggled.

“See? I told you so. Landfowl, those are the true birds. To have the ability to fly, and then to choose not to; that’s how you can tell a bird has honor,” Trixie continued, and Owloysius chattered as if to laugh.

“You know Trixie, if you really do like ground birds, I know a lot of pheasants and other birds who I’m sure would… love you,” spoke Fluttershy, ever eager to pair a pony with a pet.

“Be that as it may, I’m not interested in taking care of any animal, avian or otherwise. I had a pet bird once, and it didn’t end well for either of us,” Trixie said, a little dismissively.

“Oh?” Fluttershy’s entire mood seemed affected by the statement, for the worse.

“You’ve never told me you had a pet,” Twilight nuzzled him, with more tenderness and understanding than Trixie needed at the time.

“Yes, his name was Koot Hoomi, and he was a peacock I found as a chick. That is to say, when he was a chick. I raised him in the garden of my, um,” he glanced at Fluttershy, “in a place I used to live.”

“What happened to Koot Hoomi?” Fluttershy trotted around to sit at Trixie’s other side, so Twilight wouldn’t be between them.

“Well, uh, in certain, far-flung corners of the world, there exist what magicians call ‘entropic fields,’ which, in the magical sense, are the essence of all death and decay, and this place I used to live in was surrounded by one,” he paused to see Fluttershy nodding, and felt Twilight still nuzzling him. “The only thing that kept it at bay was an ‘ectropic’ field. Where these don’t exist naturally, only powerful unicorns can create them. When the unicorn who generated the ectropic field that protected my garden died, entropy started setting in. I wasn’t strong enough to project my own ectropy (and I’m probably still not,) so everything in the garden, the garden itself, started to corrupt and die.”

“And Koot Hoomi, the peacock?” Fluttershy, saddened, had also started to nuzzle the stallion.

“W-well, I, uh, I had to-... He was already in pain, the peacock, so I had to put the creature out of its misery,” Trixie stammered, senses overwhelmed by the mares’ simultaneous attempts to comfort him over an incident for which, in him, no strong feelings lingered. “Where did Spike get off to? I believe he had a question for me,” he said, stumbling back and absconding down the stairs to the basement, where Spike would assuredly not be.

“Huh?” was the most Twilight could think to utter. Once Trixie vanished it occurred to her that both Spike and Owloysius had also disappeared from the room, leaving only herself and Fluttershy to smirk awkwardly at one another. Trixie, even as a colt, had the uncanny, almost mesmeric ability to command the attention of everypony in a room, even with a blasé anecdote about his dead pet peacock. In the beginning, she assumed it was her romantic attraction to Trixie that enthralled her in these moments, but recalled soon thereafter that he made his living as a stage magician and hypnotist.

Besides, the first notion would do little to explain Fluttershy becoming so enamored with the stallion during his story.

“Well, I should head home, soon. Angel gets upset if I’m not back by a certain time,” Fluttershy lightly nuzzled Twilight, as though she were embarrassed.

“Of course; well, thank you again for helping Owloysius!” Twilight grinned, and the two mares exchanged a few more polite but inconsequential words before Fluttershy departed and Twilight returned to her novel, the clock behind ticking steadily.

Author's Note

The entire conceit of this story, as an exercise, is to create a body of text from which the reader can extrapolate very profound and visceral meanings from interactions that seem inconsequential, or even banal; and I think that this chapter is the pinnacle of that entire notion. That is to say, I think the interactions in this chapter are the most banal (and not necessarily the most profound).

I spent much more time and thought trying to piece this chapter together, to an end that may not seem readily apparent, or just isn't apparent, at all. I'll try to work back into that atmosphere that found the story in its beginning, as I think that struck a happier, more readable balance. If any readers have an opinion on that (or anything else in the story) I'd be happy to hear them.

Stoned Immaculate

A low hiss and a tangy fragrance pierced the air as the roselle bled its essence into the hot water of the brewer, producing a deep ruby red tea than would soon be ready for imbibing. Hibiscus was one of Twilight’s favorite teas, but it wasn’t commercially available in Ponyville, and even in Canterlot it was only carried by specialty shops; but Zecora, an herbalist of questionable efficacy but undoubtable diligence, kept her hut well stocked with the plant itself. Once it was finished brewing, Twilight would stir in a tablespoon of honey and pour the sweetened decoction into her favorite porcelain mug.

Until that appointed time, though, she was content to have a quiet moment in the kitchen. Spike was upstairs, lounging in his ‘bed,’ glassy-eyed and flipping through some fantasy comic book (or a ‘graphic novel,’ as he preferred to call them) set in the dark ages. Trixie usually teased Spike when he caught the whelp enjoying the illustrated adventures of muscle-bound and scantily-clad barbarians, calling it ‘homoerotic literature’. Spike would rebuff the implications, or try to, by pointing out Trixie’s own effeminate proclivities. Twilight observed many such exchanges between the two, but the ribbing all seemed to be in good fun, so she dismissed it as one of the social rituals entailed by a healthy male relationship.

The stallion himself was currently in his room, downstairs, though Twilight didn’t know what he might be doing. He was awake, she could sense that, but otherwise she could only guess. Besides the scholastic pursuits that mark the regular activities of all magicians (research, translation, transcription, etc.), Trixie spent his day appreciating the latest visual and audial art produced by the foreign scenes and centers of culture. He even kept a semi-regular correspondence with the artists and musicians he had met during his travels as an illusionist. Despite his heavy leanings toward Unicorn exceptionalism, Trixie was very tapped into the artistic and social currents of many cultures and subcultures, and adamantly maintained a position that all art was, by its nature, good; and refused to criticize even the ‘worst’ pieces.

Apart from the aforementioned occupations, Trixie also kept a strict (but flexible) schedule of religious and quasi-religious rites, rituals and observances, undoubtedly passed down to him from the High Unicorns through his Master. From what Twilight could observe, most of these exercises were mental, and took place on a higher plane. The real, tangible effects of Trixie’s meditative works were undeniable; being a magician herself, she could feel the magical energies realign and enter certain configurations whenever he did these things, and the nexus (along with the ley lines that comprised it,) ‘under’ the Golden Oak had become considerably more powerful ever since Trixie moved in.

“Your red water is hissing at me,” announced Trixie, a white hoof greeting the polished stone of the kitchen floor. “I think it’s angry,” he continued, this being his idiosyncratic way of suggesting the tea was finished brewing.

“It’ll be ready in just a minute more,” answered Twilight. “You could have some if you like, with me.”

“The stuff is just too bitter for me to enjoy. Tea, I mean,” spoke Trixie, trotting over to the pantry.

“But this is hibiscus tea, not-”

“The iced tea Applejack sent over a few weeks ago was good,” clanging came from the pantry along with the stallion’s voice.

“That was syrup, not tea. Do you have any idea how much sugar they put in it, and what kind of leaves they use?” Twilight stepped over to peep Trixie searching, but kept an eye on the brewer (so as to not miss the narrow window of opportunity).

An unceremonious, “No,” was Trixie’s only reply as he levitated a large, glazed earthenware jug from the pantry, sealed with a cotton cloth under the lid.

Twilight recognized the jar. “Oh no, you aren’t going to drink your potion right before dinner, are you?”

“I was precluded from my regular ‘quaffing’ in the morningtime, and our… rendezvous made me miss lunch,” Trixie unsealed the jar and a pungent, saccharine aroma escaped. “So I’m hungry, anyway. And we won’t eat dinner for another couple hours.”

(The beverage in question was mixed according an ancient herbal, almost naturopathic recipe given to Trixie by Yisrach. The general makeup of the ‘potion’ was this: the seeds of cucumbers, dried raisins [without seeds], the flowers of coriander, the seeds of mallow and purslane, meal and a few other ingredients, mixed together with wild honey. Trixie drank the beverage every day if he could, as he had been bade by Yisrach to do so, in the interest of maintaining a strong, healthy body. It was said that Akhmezakh the Sidereal, a High Unicorn hero of legend, subsisted on this beverage [and some other roots and herbs] during his pilgrimage in the Black Desert after the Death of Ulaam.)

The brewer interjected a series of clicks and small dings, as it did periodically during its processes, and Twilight toggled the machine’s main circuit off with magic.

“I also didn’t have any lunch,” Twilight sidled up to Trixie, nuzzling him lightly. “I was going to have a begonia sandwich, with my tea. You could have half,” she planted a light kiss on his cheek and levitated the lid back onto the jar, and Trixie realized he didn’t have a choice. “It won’t spoil your appetite like a glass of your potion would.”

After pretending to mull it over for a moment, “... fine. I will allow you to lead me into temptation, just this once,” Trixie turned his nose up, in a jape, and Twilight giggled.

“Then could you get the begonias from the fridge for me, sweetie?” Twilight produced an unsliced loaf of bread from its box on the counter, and after Trixie replaced the jar he levitated a packet of begonias, stems and all, from the refrigerator.

“What are we having for supper, anyway? Is Spike cooking, or… ?” Trixie unpackaged the begonias and set them gingerly beside the cutting board.

“Stuffed peppers to go with the leftover butternut squash, is what I was told, but you know how Spike likes to change his mind once he gets in the kitchen,” Twilight used magic to slice the dark, grainy bread into two thin slivers, and apportioned the begonias evenly between them before halving the sandwich into wedges.

Once Trixie ‘moved in’ Twilight insisted that he, she, and Spike eat dinner regularly, to both socialize the felonious stallion and also to engender a familial cohesion between the three. The average arrangement for dinner was either Spike cooking, or ordering out. Spike was the only one among the three who enjoyed cooking and possessed real culinary talent. Twilight could cook, and didn’t dislike it, but found too little challenge to be interested. Trixie found cooking banal, and his ability was restricted to a handful of obscure dishes his master taught him, such as the aforementioned ‘Akhmezakhian potion’.

“Are you going to perform your, um, blessing over your half?” asked Twilight, a little teasingly. She had noticed early on that, whenever Trixie was about to have a private meal (like drinking the potion), he would take special care to stare intensely at the food for a few seconds before eating it, sometimes even waving his hooves over the meal. It didn’t take a trained sorceress to see there was some manner of rite being performed.

“Bite thy tongue,” he retorted, tongue-in-cheek (but with a current of authenticity). “That is the ancient mystery and practice of metousiosis to which you refer; and no, I won’t.”

“Why not?” Twilight asked, sincerely but without losing the air of teasing. She took a bite of her half of the sandwich, remembering to pour a mug of tea.

“Food or drink that has been… uh… energized in that way must be received with reverence and thanksgiving,” Trixie took a small enough bite from his own half that he could choke it down and quickly retort in case Twilight shot back with something clever. “Not the sort of meal you could converse over. I’m surprised you haven’t read about it-”

“I have,” verified Twilight and, after sipping her tea, she continued, “or, I’ve read about approximations of it, but never written by somepony who had actually done it.”

Trixie seemed as though he was going to reply, but never did. He just gazed off nonchalantly and ate his sandwich. Twilight stepped back over from the brewer and nuzzled him.

“Would you like a sip of my tea? Or I could pour you your own mug,” she asked.

“No, thank you,” he answered.

“Why do you get so uncomfortable when we talk about this sort of thing?” she asked, immediately after.

“What?” Trixie asked, innocently enough.

“You know what,” answered Twilight, and he did.

“Tea?”

“Trixie!”

“What?!”

“Don’t play d-...” Twilight sighed. “You always freeze me out when we talk about this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?” Trixie asked again, just a little bit more earnestly.

“Things that have to do with your religion,” Twilight answered.

“Don’t say it like that,” Trixie’s voice became smoother, darker.

“Say it like how?”

“‘My religion,’ like it’s so far out and anomalous,” an indignant Trixie revealed, dropping the act.

“I’m sorry if it sounded like that. That isn’t what I meant by asking,” Twilight set her mug of tea down and hugged him, seeing that Trixie might drop into one of his moods. He offered no resistance. “I just… I’m interested in it, and not just intellectually, but also because it’s a big part of who you are, and I love you.”

Trixie, seeming placated and feeling a little guilty, ate the last bite of his sandwich and returned Twilight’s embrace. They lingered there, in silence, for a few moments.

“I love you too, Twilight,” said Trixie. All sense and intuition led Twilight to believe he would continue, hopefully with an answer, but he never did. Trixie just sat there, hugging her in silence.

Once the atmosphere in the kitchen calmed, Twilight could feel around him, emotionally, an air of profound diffidence. Trixie was never wanting for confidence, earned or otherwise. It struck Twilight that the heart of his sensitivity in discussing the High Unicorn theology must be rooted either in a fear he did not truly comprehend it, or in a belief he did not possess the ability to accurately communicate it to other ponies.

Twilight held no misgivings over the origin of this problem. Like many of Trixie’s other emotional issues, she blamed this on his dead ‘master’.

But that would have to be a conversation for a much later date.

“Okay,” Twilight nuzzled Trixie, and that was the end of it. They lingered in the embrace for just awhile longer. “Do you like stuffed peppers?”

“What? Oh, yes, I don’t mind them. But, like you said, you can never tell what Spike is actually going to cook for dinner.”

“Mhm,” grinned Twilight, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to try some tea?”

“Sure, I’ll try it.”

Author's Note

I played around with the pacing in this chapter, but only to do what I felt was necessary to accurately portray and convey that sort of argument that can ambush two people involved with one another. I hope you enjoyed it, and I apologize for taking my sweet time writing it. Unless the story has to take me elsewhere, there ought to be two to three more chapters.

Trixie’s drink, or the recipe for it, was actually first recorded in history as being invented by the man from Samos, Pythagoras. The philosopher would take a ration of it, along with some kind of vegetarian cake made with similar ingredients, with him when he would meditate for extended periods of time in temples to the Divine. He said that Hercules partook of the same diet when he was a mere mortal man trekking through the deserts of Libya, according to the instructions of the goddess Ceres.

That is to say, while history tells us Pythagoras invented these recipes, Pythagoras said that the gods gave it to mankind. Believe whatever you’d like.

P.S. This chapter’s title is taken from a Jim Morrison poem.

"that schoolboy thing, etc."

Twilight toggled on the floor lamp beside her escritoire, as the descent of the evening sun had left the natural lighting of her study wanting. The Golden Oak was quiet, with Spike cooking dinner and Trixie tinkering with some broken magical gadget his master had left him, which he referred to as a ‘tepaphone’ (or something to that effect); so the mare had repaired upstairs to get a little reading done. It was a difficult decision (or, at least, she pretended it was), to choose between academic research or reading solely for pleasure, but she ultimately chose the latter — with her reasoning being that she wouldn’t have had enough time to undertake serious research, as dinner would’ve been ready in an-hour-at-most.

That hour-at-most chanced to expire only seconds after the lamp cast its light on the last paragraph of the chapter Twilight was reading, and Spike’s dopey voice rang out from the kitchen below, telling everypony that dinner was ready. She half-heartedly answered that she would be down in just a moment, and tried to hurry through the final sentences without tainting the atmosphere that built up to them.

Then the book was closed, the lamp extinguished, and the door shut behind Twilight as she trotted down the stairs to greet Spike sat alone at the dining table. The whelp’s scaly head was teetering on his propped-up arm, looking bored as he waited for the last ‘guest’ to arrive. One of Trixie’s less offensive but more occurrent habits was refusing to appear for meals unless Twilight herself went to fetch him. This began when he first started living in the Golden Oak, but unlike most his other annoying peccadillos, never subsided.

“I’ll go get him,” sighed Twilight, before turning to step down the stairs toward the basement.

“Sure thing,” said Spike, the words echoing down the stairs and in Twilight’s thoughts as she easily navigated the machines and workstations that littered the basement. She opened the door to Trixie’s quarters, without knocking, to find him looming over some deconstructed apparatus, which might have resembled an antique projector. He had written a few pages worth of notes, all in cipher, about the thing, and set out seven-or-so broken or besmirched squares of translucent colored paper which seemed to fit into the device.

“Do you know of any merchants in town that sell dyed, diaphanous vellum?” Trixie monotonously asked, eyeing the lenses in a conical piece protruding from the anterior of the apparatus. “Because I really don’t want to use cloth for the-”

“Dinner’s ready, Trixie. Come on. You can play with your old gizmos later,” Twilight hooked a hoof around his foreleg and tugged, cajoling him up from the floor and to his hooves.

“And the oil you use to keep the wick burning is also important, and it has to be pure — unadulterated; and I don’t know if anypony in town sells oils without… accelerants or whatever,” the stallion mumbled, slowly standing up. “I could always make the oils myself, but… I rather wouldn’t. I’m lazy like that, you know.”

“I know, sweetie. Spike’s waiting for us,” Twilight and Trixie egressed the room and trotted up the stairs, the stallion’s mind quickly returning from wherever his tinkering had made it wander.

Seeing the two unicorns emerge, Spike sat up and smirked, readying himself to recite a self-congratulatory rodomontade about the dishes he had prepared — something he usually did when he unveiled a new recipe. Twilight sat at her regular seat, already affecting a proud grin in anticipation of the dragon’s boasting. Trixie clumsily settled onto his own cushioned seat, using the same glassy-eyed, aloof expression that he had worn in the basement to look over the spread on the dining table.

The main course looked to be a glowingly aurulent vegetable casserole, and this was offset by the leftovers of a roasted butternut squash from the night before. Trixie, as usual, was the first to serve himself a few small helpings of each dish, and Twilight did the same for herself and Spike.

While Trixie looked up and silently incanted his magician’s prayer over the meal, Spike eased into his sibilatory bragging over his culinary acumen, saying, “I know it looks like it was hard to make — my, uh, ‘vegetable strata’ is what we chefs call it — but it’s actually pretty simple, if you know what you’re doing, like I do.”

The street lamps outside could be seen to magically flicker on, their warm jasmine light cascading through the glazed glass windows. A firm breeze rustled the branches of the Golden Oak.

Twilight and Trixie had both begun to eat by now, and Spike’s own serving was getting cold as he continued, “See, all I did was take a couple red and yellow papers and, uh, ‘julienned’ them (that’s a chef’s word, which means I sliced them really thin); and after that I minced some garlic, and sliced an onion with some of the squash I didn’t roast yesterday.”

While Spike spiraled into recounting his profound skill in cooking simple dishes, Twilight gradually and unconsciously tuned him out, instead focusing her attention on the stallion across the table. Trixie was quietly, delicately eating scant forkfuls of squash when he caught sight of her staring, then he smiled as he shyly locked eyes with her, before diffidently casting his gaze back down at his plate. It was in these small moments that Twilight was allowed to behold one of the great secrets of the world — something nopony else could see.

Beneath the rosy, painted veneer of a magic-addled antiquarian or occultist, beyond the imposture of a tyrannical warlock, and far removed from the ever present put-on of an egomaniacal superstar was the true Trixie — Twilight’s Trixie.

Just a few feet away.

“Trixie?” called the filly.

“Yes, Twilight?” answered the colt, sitting up from where he was reclining in the sunny garden behind Twily’s parents’ house.

“Could you hand me that bottle out of the bag, there? I think the dragon is hungry, now,” asked Twily, pointing one forehoof at a bag full of babysitting paraphernalia, and scooping up the infant dragon with the other.

“Of course. The full one, right?” Trixie levitated a bottle brimming with some off-white substance over to his little filly friend.

“Yep. Thank you,” Twily uncapped the bottle and gently placed the nipple in the dragonling’s mouth. Between gasps for air, the creature eagerly drank the concoction.

“You said Celestia gave you this stuff?” Trixie closed the bag and stepped over to Twily, looking over her shoulder at the nursing dragon.

“Mhm, and this formula. It’s got protein, and calcium — and other nutrients — with a lot of crushed-up gemstones.” She set the dragon down on a pillow they’d brought out into the garden, as it had grasped the bottle with its nubby claws and could nurse itself. “The book she gave me said mother dragons make this ‘milk’ in their throat, like doves; and they feed their babies like birds do, too.”

“Then how does it know how to suck the ‘milk’ from a bottle?” asked Trixie as he laid down on the silky, blue Canterlot grass.

Bemusement flashed across Twily’s features as she glanced back at the suckling dragon. A moment passed, then she giggled, saying, “I don’t know.” Then she joined the colt on the ground, laying on her back to watch the clouds sail the sky.

“When are you going to give it a real name, instead of calling it ‘dragon’?” asked Trixie, rolling over so he could also look up.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure how dragon names are supposed to sound,” she answered.

“You could give it a pony name,” he suggested.

“Yeah, I guess I could.”

“Like ‘Leopold’ or ‘Fabio’.”

“Uh,” Twily looked incredulously at her friend. “Maybe a modern pony name would be better.”

“Well, if you want. It’s your dragon,” Trixie answered, and the metal gate to the garden could be heard squealing open.

Princess Cadance and her boyfriend, Twily’s big brother Shining Armor came trotting through into the back garden, smiling at one another and looking a little surprised to see the two children already there.

“Hi Twily, hi Trixie!” Cadance greeted, beaming with love for the two schoolponies as she trotted up to the baby dragon. “I heard Celestia gave you a new responsibility, Twily,” the alicorn joked, nuzzling the filly. “Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.

“It’s a boy,” answered Twily, proudly.

“Speaking of boys,” Shining Armor interjected, slyly smirking at Trixie as he slowly approached the colt. “I thought I told you to stop hanging around my sister,” he jokingly threatened, before snatching Trixie into his forelegs and giving the colt a vicious noogie.

“Stop! Stop! I hate this!” Trixie screamed, thrashing against Shining Armor’s restraining embrace.

“Let him go! It’s not funny!” Twily shouted at her brother, who was laughing at the ordeal.

“Shining Armor, you stop that right now!” Cadance said sternly, cradling the baby dragon, who seemed frightened by the loud noises.

“Twilight?” asked Spike.

“Huh? I’m sorry, what?” answered Twilight, looking over at the little chef.

“Can you taste the oregano? Or did I use too much?” asked Spike, repeating himself.

“Oh, no, it tastes perfect, Spike. You did a very good job,” Twilight used her magic to levitate another slice of strata onto her plate.

“I told you, Trixie. Maybe there’s just something wrong with your tastebuds,” Spike was vindicated.

“You’re right: they’re too refined for this… this tripe,” Trixie turned up his nose and pushed his plate away, only half-jokingly.

“Oh, come on, Trixie,” Twilight tried to console the stallion. “He was just joking. Eat the rest of your meal,” she goaded. “Spike, didn’t you have something to ask Trixie? About the clock?” she smirked, sipping from the glass of tea Spike had placed when he set the table.

“Oh, yeah. Hey Trixie,” Spike leaned forward. “Twilight and I had a disagreement about-”

“I agree with Twilight,” answered Trixie, and Spike looked annoyed. The dragon looked even more annoyed when he heard Twilight’s stifled giggling across the table.

Author's Note

The alternate title was "Macbeth, act iv. sc. 3, line 321"

Chess and Dessert

“Pawn to ‘E’ four,” said Trixie, and the illusory white pawn slid across the board like smoke crawls on glass. The unicorn aloofly reclined in his seat while his mare, sat opposite him, decided on what response might be most entertaining for the evening.

After some deliberation, Twilight amusedly announced, “Pawn to ‘E’ five.” It was a Double King’s Pawn Opening. Against a lesser mind, Trixie would have played pawn to f4, but chessmaster Twilight could humiliate him whether the King’s Gambit was accepted or rejected. She was more than wise to those tactics.

“Knight to ‘F’ three,” said he, and the half-realized appearance of the piece wrenched through the air and onto the square called. This was an opening that he had played with some success against his special somepony. She would normally play Nc6 in response, to which he would play Nc3 — and he had never lost a Four Knights Game. But Twilight eventually stopped taking the bait, and started playing Bc5, to which Trixie had yet to formulate a response.

With a smug, knowing look, Twilight said, “Pawn to ‘F’ five.” Trixie’s heart sank. She only played these exotic moves when she knew for certain that she had his strategies figured out. Only humiliation could follow.

Putting on her best impression of the haughty baritenor voice Trixie used to boast, Twilight said, “The Grypho Countergambit! Didn’t expect that? But, how could you? Or did you forget that you’re playing against a champion?”

Trixie shot her an annoyed look, and she giggled.

“You know,” he started, “I’m beginning to think there’s a reason I’m the only pony who will play chess with you.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Twilight stood up from her chair, looking as though she were about to go somewhere. “You’re the only pony smart enough to play against me,” she said, more to placate her stallion and his injured ego, than out of arrogance (though there was an indelible tinge of arrogance in the statement). She pecked him on the cheek and asked, “I’m going to get a slice of cake for dessert, would you like some?” Trixie nodded. “Anything to drink?” she asked further, nuzzling him.

“A glass of the coffee I have chilling in the refrigerator, please,” he answered.

“M-hm. And that coffee is decaf, right?” Twilight asked, carefully watching the stallion’s response.

“Yeah.”

“No, it isn’t,” stated Twilight, not-quite-scolding but not sweetly, either.

“How did you know?”

“I can just tell when you’re lying, Trixie,” Twilight nuzzled him so he wouldn’t pout. “Come on, it’s too late for caffeine, and you’re already getting a lot of sugar with your cake. How about a nice, cold glass of milk, instead?”

“Fine,” he said, like an ingrate. Twilight planted another kiss on his cheek and vanished downstairs.

Trixie dropped his façade of indifference once she left, and began to intensely scrutinize the tactical makeup of the game, determined to make his move before she returned. His calculations were strained by the sound of the mare’s racket in the kitchen, and eventually by the sound of she and Spike speaking to one another; but his desire to win the chess match far exceeded his natural inclination to eavesdrop, so he did his best to ignore the noise and focus on the game.

The whelpling had probably been performing one of his chores, or ogling the grotesque tableaus in his homoerotic comic books downstairs when Twilight entered the kitchen.

Spike had, according to those superliminal social cues which develop in domestic arrangements such as these, come to understand that if Trixie and Twilight were in her bedroom, he probably shouldn’t be. (Even so, every night Spike would still creep in and lay himself in the cushioned basket at the foot of Twilight’s bed, unless he was sleeping at somepony else’s home. This annoyed Trixie to no end.)

Reining his thoughts back onto the game, Trixie decided that he would accept the countergambit, and moved his Knight to e5, taking the pawn. He leaned back, slouching against his seat and trying resume the appearance of a lackadaisical magician. Downstairs, Twilight had stopped speaking to Spike, and Trixie intuited she would be back in only moments.

He didn’t know what it was about chess that brought the hubris out of his otherwise (needlessly) humble special somepony. When she called herself a ‘champion,’ she was alluding to several scholastic tournaments played during their time at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. She won them all, of course, with Trixie cheering her on from the audience. She was taught and trained in the game by her father, Night Light, who was a grandmaster and had also won several tournaments. Night Light used to say, and probably still did say, that ‘chess ran in their blood’ on account of their descent from Eventide Coruscate, some mediaeval astronomer who wrote a famous textbook on the game and its theory.

Night Light also taught Trixie the basics of the game, but, as a colt, he never much cared for chess — preferring to play pretend, even into adolescence.

The effluvial dweomer of the illusory chess pieces gleamed against the lantern light shining in from outside. Twilight had won the board in one of the tournaments at magic school, and it was designed to be used by students of magic, who would have to concentrate their imaginal faculties on the board to maintain the illusion of the pieces. The idea was to teach young unicorns to maintain concentration while still being able to think critically. For magicians as gifted and powerful as Twilight and Trixie, though, this was hardly a consideration.

“Here’s your dessert, Trixie,” Twilight had snuck in while Trixie reminisced, and levitated a second table over to the one on which sat the chess board. She set Trixie’s and her own plates and drinks down and gingerly took her seat.

“Oh? Um... Thank you, Twily,” Trixie mumbled, mistakenly using Twilight’s old childhood nickname, and saw the mare smile as if she had expected it, somehow.

Trixie took a bite of the cake, which was a leftover from one of Pinkie’s parties (he didn’t remember which) and Twilight took a sip of her own glass of milk, before moving her Queen to f6. Trixie moved a pawn to d4, Twilight a pawn to d6, and they continued playing in silence for awhile, eating dessert as they did.

(From turn five to turn thirteen, the game played out as follows. Turn 5: Nf3, fxe4 6. Ng5 d5 7. Nc3 Bb4 8. Be3 Ne7 9. Qd2, Black castles kingside 10. a3 Bxc3 11. Qxc3 Nbc6 12. White castles queenside, h6 13. h4 hxg5)

By turn thirteen, both players had castled and Twilight was in control of the center. Twilight’s pawn had taken Trixie’s knight the previous turn, and she could sense his nervousness — and he could sense that she could sense his nervousness.

“You’re a very good chess player, Trixie,” she said, reassuringly.

“Thanks,” a quiet, dejected mumble.

“I bet you played against some real champions, when you were a traveling magician, huh?” she asked, trying to alleviate the stress he was feeling. Twilight had undoubtedly overheard him boasting to some kids or townsponies about his made-up exploits and acumen in chess. Maybe she thought giving Trixie the opportunity to brag would lift his spirits, but he only felt worse for being reminded of his ‘tall tales’ (bald-faced lying).

“No. I only played against Master,” he said, taking the pawn at g5 with one of his own. “He taught all of his apprentices how to play chess, and he said that since I was his last, I had to be the best. But I was never able to beat him.”

Twilight didn’t move any of her pieces, nor even contemplate a move. She said, bittersweetly, “Well, he must have been very good.”

“Oh, he had to be the best. Of all time,” said Trixie. “When I was learning how to divide my consciousness, he would help me learn by playing a game of chess against each fragment of my mind. I would use that old spell, Silver Star’s Mirror Images, to make three different bodies, and put a part of my mind in each one — then he would play three concurrent games against me, and even then he would always win.”

Twilight moved her Queen to g6, and opted to do so through magic instead of calling it out to the board. She forced a smile at Trixie’s story, even though they both knew how she felt about his ‘master’.

Trixie continued, “He wouldn’t even look at the boards, he would just construct three different games in his imagination and keep track of all the pieces as I called them out.” Then Trixie moved the f1 Bishop to e2, which was a particularly inspired moved, surprising even to himself.

Twilight looked conflicted, not about the game, but the story, and even Trixie could see it. “What?” he prodded.

“Did Cosmic Dancer ever get angry at you for losing a game?” Twilight asked, trying and failing to sound nonchalant (but Trixie didn’t notice, anyway).

“Not if I made it interesting for him,” he answered. “Of course, in the beginning I wasn’t very good at chess — not compared to Master, anyway — so he would zap me with magic, or just give me a wallop after each game.”

Twilight’s reassuring expression melted into one of tender concern. After a long pause, she delicately asked, “Do you suppose… that could be the reason you get so anxious when you think you might lose?”

“Who’s losing?” Trixie adeptly avoided the point of the question. “If anypony’s losing this match, it’s you. Now quit trying to psyche me out and make your move.”

Twilight contemplated pressing him on the matter, but remembered something Cadance told her once about ‘picking your battles,’ so she quietly sighed and played Bf5.

The rest of the game was played quickly, and in silence.

(From turn sixteen to twenty-six: 16. Rh2 Qe6 17. Rdh1 Ng6 18. f3 Rae8 19. g4 exf3 20. gxf5 Rxf5 21. Bd3 Qxe3+ 22. Kb1 Rxg5 23. Bxg6 Rxg6 24. Qc5 Rg1+ 25. Ka2 Rxh1 26. Rxh1 Qxd4)

The game ended with Trixie’s resignation, as opposed to checkmate, when he saw that he’d been outplayed and no good moves remained.

Afterwards, Twilight hugged and kissed Trixie, and told him it was a good game.